Feast on Books

The Three Stooges - Seriously

2011-06-19T10:00:00.005-05:00

Back when I was an acquisitions librarian in an academic library, I was confronted one day by an angry cataloger. (It was an extremely nerve racking experience and I was shaky for days afterward. Catalogers are fierce, dangerous creatures and you don't want to cross em. Ever.) She was outraged at one of our recent acquisitions. It was a book on The Three Stooges.

How dare we, she expostulated, purchase a book on such a trivial subject for an academic library where the rule is that all of the books should have unpleasant, dull covers, no pictures except for charts and graphs, weigh at least 5 lbs and bear titles that would encourage any reasonably sane person to leave them on the shelf. (As one of the more appealing examples, I recall a book entitled Brown Adipose Tissue. Yum! The color of its cover was also most appropriate to the title. It was a definite twofer. However, it was a bit on the slim side, there evidently not being much to say about brown adipose tissue, at least not then.)

I was fast on my feet in those days and I said the three words that left her frustrated, stymied and balked of her prey, that is me.

"Popular culture studies."

She stared at me for a minute then ground her teeth and stalked away. Once she was out of sight, I started to peruse the offending item. In truth, it was not a weighty study of Larry, Curly or Moe or Joe or Curly Joe or even Shemp. It was gossipy and photo laden. I found it completely intriguing. And I was not a big Stooges fan.

I am female and the Stooges are definitely a guy thing. I can remember watching them on "Slam Bang Theater" every afternoon after school with my cousin Geren and trying to figure out why he howled with laughter whenever Moe poked Curly or Larry or Joe or Curly Joe or even Shemp in the eyes. It just looked painful to me. But it was all so frenetic and full of inventive energy that I couldn't tear my eyes away. I just didn't find it funny.

From the book, I learned that The Stooges got their start with a vaudeville headlining comedian named Ted Healy in the early years of the 20th century. At that point, I became hooked on The Stooges as a phenomenon. I also learned that the Ted Healy style of striding confidently onto a stage with the arms swinging in order to establish dominance over the audience became the pattern for other comedians such as Jack Benny and Bob Hope.

A stooge was a kind of straight man for the main comedian. Ted Healy was the verbal wit and his stooges gave him examples of idiocy to sharpen his wit on. He would also bash them around a bit (a role that Moe took up subsequently). Then, through a series of let's say, soicumstances, Larry, Curly and Moe discovered that their brand of idiocy was funny enough by itself so they detached themselves from Mr. Healy and became The Three Stooges on their own.

I think that the longevity of The Stooges' appeal deserves a serious look, but please, no academic studies because once that happens the appeal is dead. One thing though, every once in a while in one of those slight gossipy photo laden tomes on the Stooges, the author will invariably say, "they weren't doing Shakespeare" or something close. I beg to differ. If you plucked them up from a vaudeville stage or from any one of their short films and plunked them down at the original Globe theater in the middle of one of Shakespeare's plays, they would be right at home and I mean Larry or Moe or Curly or Joe or Curly Joe or even Shemp. And I'm serious.

At the Fort Worth Library, we have most of the 190 Three Stooges short films on DVD. You can get started here.

Burlesque - What It Was and What It Wasn't

2011-06-11T14:36:00.018-05:00

Burlesque first of all is a recent movie staring Cher and Christina Aguilera and it is available here at the Fort Worth Library (we also have it in Blue-Ray). And it checks out pretty well, people seem to like it, but the critics thoroughly panned it as being a prettified, cliche ridden view of naked girl show biz, although I'm not sure that this movie shows naked (or completely naked) girls. The descriptions I've read have been pretty vague.

However, the American art form of burlesque, from the late eighteen hundreds through the early nineteen sixties, was all about the naked girls or at least the concept of naked girls particularly when the local laws didn't allow real nakedness and mostly they didn't. All right, it wasn't ALL about the naked or nearly naked girls, there were comedians and novelty acts as well and for a long time American burlesque was simply a bawdier form of vaudeville, the jokes were raunchier and the girls more nearly naked.

Then vaudeville died and only burlesque was left as live entertainment for the masses, movies became king, and to fight the competition, the girls in burlesque became more naked. The striptease became more strip and less tease, the comedians began to disappear and so did the novelty acts and now we just have strip joints where, I understand, the girls start out just about as naked as they can get without it being total and all the "art" goes into what they call the "dancing."

Recently, I've heard, that there has been a revival of interest in the artier aspects of the old burlesque, in famous strip tease artists like Ann Corio, Sally Rand, Gypsy Rose Lee, Lili St. Cyr, women who put some pizazz into taking off their clothes, hence the movie mentioned at the beginning. But, I'm afraid it all looks a lot more glamorous in retrospect than it ever really was.

Movies and books on burlesque abound and we have some here at the Fort Worth Library. One movie is Lady of Burlesque a sprightly tale from the 1940's starring Barbara Stanwyck as Dixie Daisy a headliner in a burlesque show who investigates the murder of co-worker. It is actually based on a book by Gypsy Rose Lee, The G-String Murders. The movie deals with the fact that the lead character is a stripper by never showing her "act" from the neck down. That was all the movie censors at the time would let them get away with. But it does give a notion of the raffish nature of the burlesque milieu. And, as such, it is good fun.

Actually, someone should do a remake of it. It might be a lot more fun than the reputedly candified Cher version of Burlesque. Just a thought.

But, if you want to see what burlesque was REALLY like, I recommend the documentary, Behind the Burly Q. I checked it out expecting to be vastly entertained in a light frivolous sort of way. I wasn't. Instead, I was moved, almost to tears. The beautiful and exotic women who fed the fantasies of thousands of working class men, mostly came from hard lives, poverty and in some cases abuse. Many of them have a fragile but courageous sort of dignity that is touching. With a few exceptions you got that they felt they had made something of their lives that was valuable to them and to others.

It is hard to explain, but it was there. I didn't like that they were exploited. I didn't like that they had few other choices. But I liked them. I liked their gimmicks for making their acts stand out. I liked their over the top glitzy costumes. I liked how they tried to bring something unique and special to what they did. Be warned, however, this is not for family viewing unless you want to do an awful lot of explaining.

The Hollywood Hero Who Was Real

2011-05-28T10:38:00.005-05:00

That would be Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of WWII. I think it appropriate to honor the man on Memorial Day.

He was the son of Texas sharecroppers, raised in dire poverty. He developed his sharp shooting skills by hunting to put food on his family's table. He was a slight, small man barely five foot six when he joined the army to fight in Europe. But he had great endurance, boundless courage and plenty of survival smarts. He was lithe and graceful in his movements and he was boyishly good looking to boot.

What he did to earn all those medals is well documented online, go look and prepare to be awed. He is not so well known these days but men of my father's generation, particularly, held him in very high esteem. Which is why I owe Audie Murphy a personal debt of gratitude.

My father was a regular army man. He served in combat as an advisor during the early years of the Vietnam War. He came back a different man. He had always been ebullient and outgoing and playful as a father. But the person who returned was more often angry and there was a misery in his eyes that hadn't been there before. But, he couldn't acknowledge that he might have suffered some damage. In fact, he would sneer at other veterans who would claim to have PTSD as being "soft" or cowardly or both. That is until I gave him a book called No Name on the Bullet about Audie Murphy.

Now, be warned, if I give anyone a book as a present, I will have read it myself. And I knew that the book detailed Audie Murphy's struggle with PTSD. I also found out later that Audie Murphy urged Congress to allocate funds to treat veterans suffering as he did. I wondered how dad would react. He was not a man to ever directly admit that he was wrong but sometimes after he had thought a great deal about an issue he would say something that would indicate his thinking had changed. And a few weeks later when I asked how he liked the book, he said, "I never knew he suffered that much."

And afterward my dad seemed a little less miserable, a little more comfortable in his skin and a lot less angry. And he would talk to me about his experiences, which he never had before.

So, thank you Audie Murphy, not only for your service but for what you did for veterans like my dad. Because if you could be open about what you suffered so could they. And it does help.

Now, remember I said that Audie Murphy was boyishly good looking. That helped make him a movie star, cause he was pretty, and a much better actor than given credit for. Two of his movies I recommend; we have both here at the Fort Worth Library. To Hell and Back which is the story of his own WWII exploits and No Name on the Bullet which is the movie the book took its title from. It is almost a proto-Clint Eastwood western with Audie Murphy playing a smooth, amoral killer - a chilling and effective performance. Yeah, the guy had acting chops too.

START YOUR SUMMER READING ENGINES…

2011-05-20T16:19:00.000-05:00

Did you know that Summer Reading Club is no longer just for children? Now called the Summer Reading Challenge, it is open to all ages and participation makes you eligible to win things like a MP3 player, a netbook computer or an eReader. Visit any Fort Worth Library to pick up a Reading Card and get started. The Challenge runs from May 21 to July 31, 2011. Get more information by clicking here.

If you associate summer reading with lighter fair and a supernatural bent then I have just the book for you. Check out Mercedes Lackey’s Trio of Sorcery. I have to admit that this book brought me out of a reading slump of almost 4 months. Since the holidays I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything longer than a magazine article. I started to read several books, but I lost interest before finishing them. What attracted me to this book is the fact that two of the novellas featured some of my favorite characters from books the author wrote in the '80s and '90s. Picking up this book was like finding an old friend, but don't worry if you haven't read her other books. These stories can stand alone.

The first novella “Arcanum 101” features Diana Tregarde. Diana was in 3 previous books – Burning Water, Children of the Night, and Jinx High – but this novella is a prequel to the others. You meet Diana in her neophyte days as a freshman at Harvard in 1970. Diana is asked to assist in finding a kidnapped girl and to debunk a psychic hired by the mother. The 2nd novella, “Drums,” features Jennifer Talldeer who appeared previously in Sacred Ground. In it Talldeer, an Native American shaman, must use clever means to trick an angry Osage Indian spirit from carrying a woman off into the spirit world. The final novella, “Ghost in the Machine” features Ellen McBridge, a computer programmer and techno-shaman. She thwarts an evil wendigo in a popular computer game from transcending computer code and entering the real world.

If you are looking for the supernatural verging on horror or a sexy paranormal romance, this is not the book for you. But if you want interesting, strong female characters with fantasy and magic thrown in, this just might be the book to start off your summer reading.

Get Out There and Meet Your Mother (Nature, That Is)

2011-05-17T20:30:00.007-05:00

Wasn't last weekend absolutely gorgeous? That is how I like my Mays to be. It was the kind of weekend that makes me want to get out and just explore nature. We are lucky here in the Metroplex that we don't have to go far to "commune" with nature.

In November I went camping in Oklahoma, but you don't even have to go that far. Looking for a place to go camping? Or maybe you need a book to help you get started with the whole camping thing. Or maybe the thought of sleeping in a tent isn't your cup of tea but you still want to get out there and be invigorated by Mother Nature. Here are some books to help you achieve all of those.

Where to camp:

Best in Tent Camping, Texas: a guide for car campers who hate RVs, concrete slabs

and loud portable stereos by Wendel Withrow

Camping Texas: a comprehensive guide to more than 200 campgrounds by Tom Behrens

Lone Star Travel Guide to Texas parks and campgrounds by George Oxford Miller

How-to Camp:

Basic Essentials: Camping by Cliff Jacobson

Camping by Ed Douglas

The Essential Family Camper: a handbook for the great outdoors by Zora Aiken

Just getting out there:

Best Easy Day Hikes, Dallas/Fort Worth by Kathryn Hopper

60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Dallas/Fort Worth, includes Tarrant, Collin, and Denton counties by Joanie Sanchez

Hiking and Backpacking Trails of Texas: walking, hiking, and biking trails for all ages and abilities by Mildred Little

Exotic and Chaotic: India

2011-05-10T22:05:00.004-05:00

India is intriguing to me. When I was 15 I was fortunate enough to take a vacation to England. (Yes, I know England is not India but stay with me folks.) It was the first time I tasted Indian food. (See there's the connection.) It was the night before I flew back home to Texas. We were staying in London with relatives of the family I had stayed with in East Anglia. For a celebratory dinner, we all walked down to a little Indian restaurant. I didn't know what anything was on the menu but settled on Chicken Madras. It was absolutely the yummiest thing I ate while in England. My friend's parents didn't believe I had eaten the spicy dish but I grew up on spicy Mexican food so it was just delicious.

Then in my twenties I remember watching The Peacock Spring on Masterpiece. I don't remember much about the story but I do remember it was visually stunning. It was an adaptation of a story by Rumer Godden. The actors who play the young couple are now well-known: Naveen Andrews (better known for his run on Lost) and Hattie Morahan (who has been Jane in Outnumbered and Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility).

There was also that doctoral student in college. He was doing his PhD work on agriculture in India. He was intriguing and therefore whatever he talked about was also intriguing. But I digress.

India is a very interesting country. It is the second most populous country in the world. It is religiously diverse. Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism all originated there. Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity, and even Judaism all have been present in the country. It is linguistically complex with over 21 languages spoken by the population. It has a long and varied history. Its history starts as far back as 3400 BC. The Vedic period in India is contemporaneous with the Mycenaean period in Greece. The 8th century AD witnessed the spread of Islam and set the stage for the development of the Mughal and Rajput Empires in the 10th to 15th centuries. The architecture from this period is still evident today. Beginning in the 1750s the British East India Company began acquiring land in the country. By the mid 1800s the British Crown was forced to take control of the country from the British East India Company. In another hundred years, India would gain independence from Britain.

Want to go more in depth into the history? Here are some places to start:

In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce

The Last Mughal: Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi 1857 by William Dalrymple

Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire by Alex Von Tunzelmann

The East India Company: A History by Brian Gardner

Maybe you prefer to watch your history.

The Story of India

Movies and the Truth

2011-05-04T11:00:00.000-05:00

OK, this got started with me when a patron put a DVD on request. It was the 2010 Disney movie, Secretariat. He'd seen it before but wanted to enjoy a certain part of it again, and again, and again. It was the part, he said, rubbing his hands together gleefully, where the great horse, Secretariat, won against his rival, Shams, and the villain of the piece, the rival horse's trainer, Pancho Martin, squirmed in his seat and was pushed off, if you'll excuse the expression, his high horse. And I thought, "Pancho Martin is the villain of the movie?"

You'll have guessed by now that I haven't seen Secretariat. But, I had for some strange and bizarre reason, known only to librarians, run across a laudatory piece on Pancho Martin while researching on the net. It was about how, at the age of 85, he was still training winners and in his picture he looked like a real sweetie. He reminded me of one those friendly old codgers who come into the library from time to time and flirt with us elderly lady librarians a bit just to make a girl feel good. And nowhere in the piece did it cite bad behavior on his part toward Secretariat or Secretariat's owner or trainer or jockey or anybody else for that matter.

So my curiosity aroused, I went boldly out on the net again. And whew boy! Did I run into a storm of controversy that happened last October. Some reviewer on an online Magazine called Salon castigated the movie for basically making up stuff about Ol' Pancho. And then Roger Ebert of all people, struck back saying that the movie portrait of Mr. Martin was based on the book by Roger's good buddy and that the good buddy had notes and everything quoting Pancho Martin verbatim dissing Secretariat and so on. Then I find an article quoting Secretariat's jockey saying that he enjoyed the movie expect for how it portrayed his good friend, Pancho Martin, who was always a gentleman and never would have publicly said mean things about any competitor. He added that he was hurt by what the movie did to his good friend.

I suppose I should get to the point now. OK, it is this, just because a movie says that it is based on a true story, doesn't mean that it is the truth. This shouldn't have to be said, but for better or worse a "based on" movie does seem to supersede reality. Just ask Max Baer Jr. (better known as Jethro in The Beverly Hillbillies)what the movie Cinderella Man did to the reputation of his daddy, the fighter Max Baer Senior, who in his day was actually considered a hero for his beat down of Hitler's heavyweight champion while wearing the Star of David on his boxing shorts. But in Cinderella Man he had to be a snarling, bestial brutal bad guy, just to make the hero look more heroic.

It hardly seems fair. In fact, it isn't fair. But, I don't know how to make hack screenwriters stop doing this sort of thing, so if you like watching that scene in Secretariat where the arrogant loudmouth, Pancho Martin, gets his comeuppance, just try to keep in mind that the real Pancho probably didn't deserve it. OK?

The Fast Runner

2011-03-25T15:00:00.004-05:00

In my youth, every once in a while, I would get dragged to what were called "art" films. Mostly they were foreign and impenetrable. There was one by the revered "New Wave" French director, Jean-Luc Godard, that was basically one long lecture and turned me off completely although I have been reliably informed that many of his works are worth watching and perform due diligence to the narrative form. But, I am still afraid to try them. I never want to be that bored again.

So I was dubious at best when a friend in whose home I was visiting begged me to go with her to see an all Inuit made movie called The Fast Runner. She hadn't been able to talk her husband or daughters into it and she was counting on me. Oh, dear. The Inuit by the way are the people we used to call Eskimo. Ok? Get it?

I blanched. It was 172 minutes I read on the flyer. That's almost three hours, folks. I imagined three hours of looking at Arctic waste and minuscule figures struggling against blizzards, women chewing blubber endlessly. But, I thought, after all, I was a guest in her wonderful old New England house, she was feeding me and giving me wine to drink while we stayed up to all hours, well, "chewing the fat." So, I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth and said, "Sure."

I need not have been afraid. The Inuit have a firm grip on the narrative form. And The Fast Runner is a depiction of one of their oldest legends and one that has jumped directly from the oral tradition into the cinematic. It is utterly and completely engrossing even though the first thirty minutes or so is a bit disorienting because it takes you that long to get used to how the Inuit view their world and relationships. But even when you are confused, the film is a visual feast. And by the end of three hours, you don't want it to end.

The Past is Another Country

2011-03-05T14:42:00.002-06:00

I don't know who said that...about the past being another country. But it is pretty much true. That was brought home to me when I went to look at the exhibit called "Hidden Views" in the gallery here at the Fort Worth Central Library. It is material from our Genealogy and Local History Archives. It has been up for a few weeks now and I don't know for how much longer, but it does give one a notion of how much Fort Worth has changed through its long history.

One of the most fascinating little exhibits in it, to me, is the one that shows an example of how "exact copies" were made before photocopiers and no it wasn't by someone "copying" with pen and ink. It was more fascinating than that. You see, before the original document's ink had dried, a piece of very thin, very porous paper was pressed on top of it and...viola...there was one perfect copy. Of course, those copies on very thin very porous paper didn't last very long, they deteriorated and fell apart as the years passed. But, on display, here are some of the last reams of them bound together left.

You see how the past disappears so that things that once were commonplace because they were just part of every day, bit by bit, year by year, drop from existence and memory and record. They are gone to dust and we cannot even imagine what the world was like then, not really. Our recreations are piecemeal and patchy just like our memories.

I can vaguely remember a world without central air, sleeping out on screened in porches during the summer with loud turning fans sweeping hot air over me as I tried to sleep. Houses were built with large windows that opened for cross breezes.

I could go on, but I won't. Just come and see "Hidden Views" and wonder at that foreign country that is the past. It is endlessly interesting.

The Oscars - Best Picture - My Say

2011-02-27T11:06:00.004-06:00

First, I've only seen three of the nominees. One of them, The King's Speech, is supposedly a shoo-in for the award. Well, OK, but truth to tell, when it was over the audience dutifully applauded as if they were impressed but I just felt like I had watched a pleasantly overstuffed but not overly compelling Masterpiece Theater production.

I did not see Black Swan because all of the hype and advertising made it look like one of those Ken Russell indulgences that are always about a famous artist going mad and acting out in some lurid, sexually lewd way. They are like really bad nightmares you wake up exhausted from and none of it looks like any fun at all.

I did not see Social Network or The Fighter either or 127 Hours for that matter. I'm sure they are all worthy but my interest was nil. I don't like fight movies, watching some guy work his way up to cutting off his own leg is not my idea of either entertainment or enlightenment and twenty-something males stabbing each other in the back is, well, just boring to this sixty something female.

As for Inception, honestly, I just haven't gotten around to it. On Toy Story 3 I'm still trying to figure out why a movie that most critics judged as the lesser of the Toy Story series got nominated at all this year especially with so much competition. And, as for The Kids are All Right, I'll check it out sometime...probably. Domestic drama is not one of my faves either.

Which leaves the other two that I did see, Winter's Bone and True Grit. These two movies I talked about in my previous post, Movies for the Soul, and I would be happy if either got the Oscar. But according to the prevailing wisdom out in Oscarland, they won't.

I think it interesting that both are basically hero quests by young women who have as guides and mentors, rough hewn men of questionable moral caliber. I could spend a lot of time delving into all the Jungian implications and connections to mythology and fairy tale lore. That would be loads of fun...for me, but probably not for you. So, I'll stop now.

As for the awards themselves, they will be what they will be. But now, at least, I've had my say.

Movies for the Soul

2011-01-02T09:14:00.007-06:00

Well, we are through the Holiday season and like others I had Christmas visitors who have now departed. But when they were here, my sister, her husband and daughters, went on a movie going binge. That's right. My family simply lost their heads because according to my sister first run movies in San Diego cost $12.00 per adult and matinees are $9.00. Yikes!

I don't often go to movie theaters so the experience was eye-opening. I have now come to the conclusion that the movie industry has made it so onerous that it is almost not worth it no matter how good the movie is what with numerous loud obnoxious commercials for "body scent" and other stuff and loud noisy explode-your-head previews for new movies that are not so much movies as they are concoctions for squeezing money out of the preteen boy in all of us.

But, one of the movies we saw was worth it. And that is the new version of True Grit by the Coen Brothers. This is the version I hoped to see way back when I read the book and heard that it was going to be filmed with John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn. I knew he'd be good. And he was good, but most of the rest of the 1969 movie was not. As the fierce fourteen year old Mattie, we had a twenty-one year old Kim Darby who either decided herself or was told by the director to play it perky. As the prickly Texas Ranger, we had Glen Campbell who proved conclusively that not all good singers can act.

This 2010 version shows just how compelling the story is when all parts are strong and firing on all cylinders. By the end of it, me, my niece and my sister were in tears. The Coen Brothers have rescued an important piece of American literature from being known primarily as a showboat for the redoubtable John Wayne. It was definitely a soul satisfying experience.

I can also recommend two other movies that engage the psyche more deeply than simply stimulating the appetite to watch something explode. Both are available through the Fort Worth Library system and can be watched at home where one's eardrums are safe from the cacophony of Hollywood concoction.

One is Winter's Bone, a 2010 independent feature, directed by Debra Granik, that has been described as a rural noir. In fact, its depiction of the community and family destroying effects of the rural methamphetamine scourge rivals anything the urban blight of crack cocaine had to offer, making the heroism of the young woman who must battle for her family's survival all the more remarkable and, yes, soul satisfying.

The other film I have to recommend is an indie film also but so much more indie than even Winter's Bone, that, at first, it couldn't even attract a distributor. Then, it went out viral on the web and was downloaded so much that eventually a distributor put it on DVD. It is Ink, a 2009 release directed and produced by Jamin Winans. It is a fantasy with effects so simple yet convincing that I was reminded of the thrill I felt watching Cocteau's Orphee and realizing that the entrance to the underworld through the looking glass was just Cocteau filming a hand piercing the surface of a still pool of water but with the picture turned on its side. The whole of Ink functions at that level of creativity and wonder as it tells the story of a man's redemption. It seems slow at first but it rewards patience and satisfies the soul. At least, it did mine.

So, have a Happy New Year and may you find those experiences that satisfy your soul.

Christmas Carols

2010-12-23T11:15:00.003-06:00

So here am I, sitting at the Media reference desk, listening to Christmas carols playing on the departmental boom box. And I am thinking about how my most favorite music to sing consists of Christmas carols and that I know just about every one of them. But then I hear a instrumental version of the old French carol, "Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella." And I realize that I may know the song but don't know much about it. I mean, "Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella?" What an intriguing name for a Christmas carol. And who the heck are Jeanette and Isabella or is it just one person named Jeanette Isabella? So I wiki. It is just one of the things I do.

The Wikipedia tells me that the song orginated in 16th century France as dance music for the nobility, who got all the good stuff in those days. Then it says that it became a Christmas carol in some mysterious way, wherein country folk, shepherds and milkmaids, steal up on the Virgin and Child with their torches to gaze on the newborn, saying "Ah, ah, oh what a lovely mother. Ah, ah, oh what a lovely child." Or something like that. Anyway it's in French. The Wikipedia says that they still enact the song in France with children dressing up as shepherds and milkmaids to carry torchs and candles to midnight mass on Christmas Eve while singing the carol.

And, of course, reading between the lines, that is how a dance tune for the nobility morphed into a Christmas carol. Some musically inclined peasant or priest appropriated the tune for children to sing at a navitiy scene and put those words to it. They were always doing stuff like that in the middle ages. Jeanette Isabella was a milkmaid who wanted to gaze on the newborn. I like that. It is very simple and direct and real. I love Christmas carols.

Heroes

2010-12-17T15:58:00.002-06:00

Extraordinary times bring forth extraordinary people, so it is said. I have been spending some time with both actually. My brother-in-law is Chinese and he recommended a book called The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. It is the story of the December 1937 Japanese occupation of China and the brutal treatment of the Chinese by the Japanese invaders, specifically the city and the citizens of Nanking. I warn you. It is not an easy read.

The Nanking Massacre, as it is now called, is one of the more horrifying examples of wholesale inhumanity ever recorded. Over a quarter of a million men, women and children were killed by the invading Japanese army, tens of thousands of women were raped and often mutilated. To this day many Japanese refuse to acknowledge the full extent of the horror.

However, there were witnesses there, members of the international community in Nanking who recorded the carnage and also stayed to help save as many of the Chinese as they could. This ad hoc group of European and American missionaries, businessmen, doctors and educators established a Nanking Safety Zone and managed to save at least half of the Chinese who were unable to flee the city before its fall. They risked their lives every day for months to keep their charges safe.

They played a deadly game of bluff and bravado, pretending that their own governments would back them up when that was far from certain. In fact, their elected leader, businessman John Rabe, was a German and a member of the Nazi party who did, rather naively, believe that Hitler would care what happened to the Chinese of Nanking (he didn’t, as it turned out).

Aside from the book, The Rape of Nanking, we also have a docudrama on DVD entitled Nanking. Either of these two sources will give you a good introduction to the heroes of Nanking. They are people worth knowing. One, who affected me a great deal, was the American educator, Minnie Vautrin, who ran an exclusive girls school in Nanking. After her upper class charges had been evacuated, she took thousands of the women of Nanking under her personal protection on the grounds of the school. She stood between them and the men of the Japanese army who came looking for “comfort women.” She was physically threatened and one time even beaten but she kept at it day after day, night after night. She became known as “The Living Goddess of Nanking.”

One movie I do not recommend is John Rabe, a German production. Granted the title is John Rabe and it is a given that the movie should be mostly about him, but unfortunately, the movie makers saw fit to replace the real Minnie Vautrin with a gratuitous fictional French woman who has an unrequited crush on the titular hero and only protected her initial schoolgirls and then foolishly endangered the whole Safety Zone through misplaced compassion or something like that. And an American doctor who stayed and sacrificed quite a bit of his health and sanity was made to look like somewhat of a stooge.

I don’t know why moviemakers do stuff like this. I get the feeling that they were afraid that John Rabe wouldn’t look heroic enough if those around him were portrayed as they really were. That, of course, is nonsense. And I really resent the attempt to devalue their accomplishments. Because, you know what, we need all the heroes we can get.

That old not-so-black magic

2010-12-17T15:21:00.010-06:00

PETTY MAGIC: BEING THE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF MISS EVELYN HARBINGER, TEMPTRESS AND TROUBLEMAKER by Camille DeAngelis. Crown Publishers, 2010.

“Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can sometimes…just be an illusion” – Javan quote

Evelyn Harbinger is a “good” witch who lives by the motto “By magic I shall do no harm, except in defense of myself or another.” This 149-year-old lives with her sister in modern-day New York. Having lost her one true love, Jonah, during World War II, she amuses herself by using her witchcraft to make her appear young and picks-up men of all kinds for one night stands. Then, by chance, she meets Justin, her dead lover’s doppelganger. Can love survive between a young man and a witch that is at least 100 years his senior?

WHAT ATTRACTED ME TO THE BOOK: I discovered this book among our preview copies and read it in October when I was in the mood for a fun (not scary) Halloween read. It covered a gamut of fiction genres – fantasy, paranormal romance, historical, lighthearted chick-lit – so there was bound to be something I’d like about it. I would have blogged about the book sooner, but the library has just now received its copies.

WHAT KEPT ME INTERESTED: Beyond the basic love story, Evelyn flashes back to World War II where she and Jonah worked together in the Resistance to fight against the Nazis. Back in modern times she is attracted to Justin who is eerily similar to Jonah and, yet, she is reluctant to commit to a relationship with him. Read the book to see if Justin and Evelyn get their “happily ever after.” As a side story, one of Evelyn’s sisters is accused of murdering her first husband and is forced to go to trial by her fellow witches. The murder trial’s outcome takes an unexpected twist.

I’D ALSO RECOMMEND: Find Carolyn Turgeon’s GODMOTHER: A NOVEL if you want to read about another elderly New Yorker pretending to be someone she is not. Lil was Cinderella’s godmother, but in this version Lil fell in love and decided to keep the prince for herself. For this she was banished to a modern-day metropolis where she ekes out an existence while hiding her true identity. She meets a young woman, Veronica, and devises a plan for redeeming herself so that she may return to the fairy world.

SLEUTHING PAST & PRESENT

2010-12-03T14:23:00.009-06:00

THE SHERLOCKIAN by Graham Moore. Twelve, 2010. ISBN 9780446572590.

The life of nebbish young literary researcher, Harold White, changes overnight when he is inducted into the prestigious Baker Street Irregulars society and he gets involved in the investigation of the murder of an avid Sherlock Holmes fan and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle biographer, Alex Cale. Cale claims to have found a missing diary of Doyle’s that explains a mysterious gap in his biography during the autumn of 1900. Despite being a suspect, Harold teams up with Sarah, a divorcee with secrets of her own, and heads off to London to crack the case. Chapters alternate between White’s adventures in Europe and Conan Doyle’s account of his search for the person who sent him a letter bomb. Accompanied by good friend Bram Stoker Doyle finds much more than he bargained for.

WHAT ATTRACTED ME TO THE BOOK: While I am not a die-hard Sherlock Holmes fan I have over the years found enjoyment in the stories, books, TV series and films based on this fictional character. When we received a preview copy of the book at the library, it sounded like a fun read worth delving in to.

WHAT KEPT ME INTERESTED: While I enjoyed both threads of the story, I found myself entertained by the Conan Doyle side of the book more. I liked the juxtaposition of Doyle and Stoker - Doyle being the staunch conservative anti-suffragist and Stoker the struggling author and party-hardy theater manager. After getting no help from Scotland Yard, Doyle has many mis-adventures trying to duplicate Holme’s sleuthing methods in order to solve the case. This includes going incognito to a suffragettes meeting, hunting down an elusive band of tattooed women, and spending time in the infamous Newgate Prison.

I’D ALSO RECOMMEND: Another book with a Holmesian bent that also moves between past and present is Laurie R. King’s THE ART OF DETECTION. The book combines her two best-known series – the contemporary police procedurals featuring San Francisco Police Officer Kate Martinelli and the adventures of a married Sherlock Holmes and his much younger wife, Mary Russell. Much like THE SHERLOCKIAN, THE ART OF DETECTION has Detective Martinelli investigating the death of an avid Holmes collector who has purportedly found a previously unpublished story by Sir Author Conan Doyle. The Holme’s mystery is embedded in the text of Martinelli story and also takes place in San Francisco. It involves the investigation of a transvestite nightclub singer and her missing military lover.

In with the new, but not forgetting the old

2010-10-05T16:25:00.036-05:00

You may or may not know that the Fort Worth Library system is opening a new branch at the end of the month. The Northwest Branch is located just north of the Tarrant County College’s Northwest Campus and its grand opening will be on Saturday, October 30. It promises to be a nice facility with its prairie style architecture (this picture does not do it justice), soothing color palette, and lots of windows. Sitting on top of a hill, it has some of the best scenic views of all our branches.

As Head of Acquisitions, I got to oversee the selection and ordering of the new materials for the branch. The process came full circle with me out there shelving all the pristine books, DVDs, audio books and music CDs. I got to shelve the TEEN section and it was reassuring to see some old favorites among all the vampire, werewolf, supernatural, and Gossip-girl type books that are so popular today. It was nice to know that some of the books I enjoyed when I was younger are still considered relevant. Here are some of my old young adult favorites you will find at the new branch and suggestions for newer titles of the same ilk that might be of appeal.

OLD: Paul Zindel The Pigman NEW: Tony Abbott Firegirl

Both books look at alienation and being a outsider.

OLD: S.E. Hinton The Outsiders NEW: Todd Strasser If I Grow Up

Dealing with gangs and gaining a sense of belonging.

OLD: William Sleator The House of Stairs NEW: Suzanne Collins Hunger Games

What lengths will you go to for food?

OLD: Philip Pullman Ruby in the Smoke NEW: Cassandra Clare Clockwork Angel

Orphans in Victorian England, one solving a mystery, the other dealing with supernatural beings.

OLD: Anonymous Go Ask Alice NEW: Ellen Hopkins Crank

Drug abuse takes over the lives of these teens.

OLD: Robert Cormier The Chocolate War NEWER: Orson Scott Card Ender's Game

The age old problems of peer pressure and dealing with bullies.

OLD: Robin McKinley Rose Daughter NEW: Alex Flinn Beastly

Beauty and the Beast retold - one from the girl's perspective, the other from the beast's.

At the end of the month come check out the new library and see if you can find some of your old favorites. Or, better yet, check-out stuff that may become your new favorites.

If a picture paints a thousand words....

2010-09-29T13:31:00.015-05:00

The new exhibit at the library says volumes.

I love photographs. Right now there is an awe

some exhibit at the Central Library in the east gallery. The Fort Worth Camera Club is celebrating their 80th year with an exhibit at the library that will run through December 4th.

It is a must see...and is FREE. You can even park for free if you use a meter after 6pm or on the weekends or park in the 3rd Street garage--that's the garage entrance just after Quizno's on 3rd Street.

Some of the prints that stick in my mind from the exhibit are several still lifes of car or machine parts, a lone feather on a solid blue background, and ducks or geese in a stone courtyard. These are just a few of the many photographs that make up this exhibit. There are also several display cases containing old cameras that are very interesting.

Do you have a favorite photographer?

Do you find solace in Ansel Adams' naturescapes or Robert Mapplethorpe's flowers?

Perhaps you love the voyeurism of Cartier-Bresson or Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Maybe you're intrigued by the early war photography of Mathew Brady or Roger Fenton.

Or even the glam of fashion photographers like

Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, and Annie Leibovitz.

Maybe the grit and stark reality of photojournalists like Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange or Lewis Hine is more to your tastes.

Other photographers that are worth checking out include Peter Magubane who documented life in South Africa, Salgado Sebastiao who works in Brazil, Roman Vishniac who documented the lives of Jews among other things, and Man Ray whose revolutionary photographic techniques created avant-garde works of art.

And if all this inspires you to do some art work of your own, the library has books to help you with that too.

Digital photography Manuals at the library

And in case you were wondering, my own photographs accompany this entry.

Pic 1: A large art glass candelier displayed in a glass shop on the RiverWalk in San Antonio, TX
Pic 2: An iris along the walkway at the Japanese Sunken Garden, San Antonio, TX

Pic 3: My great uncle with his navy buddies in Cuba circa 1930s

Books About Movies

2010-09-25T16:45:00.009-05:00

I seem to have a harder and harder time these days reading fiction. I have read so much that I can usually figure out where the plot is going by page 20 and after that I just lose interest. So I have more and more often turned to non-fiction where things are rarely so predictable.

Truth very definitely is stranger than fiction and I've often wondered why that fact would surprise anyone. For storytelling, the human mind demands a well worn narrative line but reality is not amenable to such a demand.

Lately, I've been reading books about the fascinating world of movie making. The two most recent are:

1) THE SONGS OF HOLLYWOOD by Philip Furia and Laurie Patterson

The surprising thing about this book is how a subject which could have been geeked to death and appeal only to those who are steeped in movie musical trivia is actually quite accessible to a dabbler, like me. It is lively and fun and full of tidbits like how after Gershwin wrote his concert works like Rhapsody in Blue, Hollywood studios were afraid he'd become too highbrow to write for them and he had to instruct his agent to send a telegram to studios saying "RUMOR ABOUT HIGHBROW MUSIC RIDICULOUS STOP AM OUT TO WRITE HITS."

The use of music in film incorporates a lot about performers, writers, lyricists, composers and directors and not a bit of it is boring. If you need a diversion, this is it.

2) CHARLIE CHAN: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE HONORABLE DETECTIVE AND HIS RENDEZVOUS WITH AMERICAN HISTORY by Yunte Huang

When I was a teenager in the 60's, the highly popular Charlie Chan detective series of books and movies was attacked by those who saw the Honolulu policeman created by author Earl Derr Biggers as exhibiting the worst of "orientalism," a noxious brew of Western condescension and stereotyping. The sagacious Chinese sleuth with a taste for aphorisms and a talent for solving puzzles was considered a Chinese "Uncle Tom." It didn't help that the author, Biggers, was a Westerner nor that Chan was played in the movies by white actors, in what is derisively termed"yellowface."

The surprising thing about this book is that the author, Yunte Huang, who was born in China, delves deep into the genesis of the Charlie Chan character and comes up with really interesting stuff. For instance, there is the fact that Biggers loved wordplay and Chan's aphorisms like, "Big head is only a good place for a very large headache," were the result. They were very clever and though they were often lampooned, they certainly never gave the impression that Charlie Chan was a "dim son" (sorry, sorry -couldn't resist). Or there is the fact that Biggers based Chan on a real Honolulu detective named Chang Apana and that this real Chinese policeman was a bull-whip wielding tough guy who went after the gambling syndicates in Honolulu's Chinatown.

Then there is the fact that Warner Oland, a Swedish actor, could play Chan without heavy make-up because some of his ancestors were Mongol. Less benign is the fact that the producers of the Chan movies encouraged Oland and his Chan successor, Sidney Toler, to work while inebriated because the drink slowed their speech and made them sound, supposedly, more like Chinese trying to speak English. This unfortunately had the effect of turning both of these actors into raging alcoholics. You see, you couldn't make this stuff up. And that is what I love about this book.

So, if you check out and read these books, let me also recommend that you visit the Fort Worth Central Library's multi-media center and check out our musicals and our DVD's of the Charlie Chan mysteries. I have and I found especially the Chans to be still very watchable and of course, musicals are always a delight and reading about how the music and songs were incorporated to enhance the stories and express the emotions of the characters will enhance your viewing experience. And the viewing will enhance your reading experience. See how that works?

VIDEO VENDING MACHINES IN THE LIBRARY! THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!

2010-09-21T10:44:00.004-05:00

I have just been informed that our new Northwest Branch, opening this Fall, will have video "vending" machines, except that you don't need to put money in them. Like all the services provided by the Fort Worth Library, you just need to be a member to access them. And if you live in Fort Worth, that doesn't cost any money either.

PLUS! You will still get the wide breath of choice available in the library, including foreign films and classics, as well as the expertise of librarians who can suggest titles to your taste.

Huzzah! Libraries will always welcome and embody new technology - especially, the Fort Worth Library.

The Stars at Night are Big and Bright....

2010-09-20T22:48:00.002-05:00

Tonight it wasn't just the stars that were bright. Tonight, September 20, 2010, Jupiter was shining brightly in the East. With a cheap telescope my son and I were able to see not only Jupiter but also its Galilean moons. Totally awesome!

Need some help finding all those stars?

Teach yourself visually: Astronomy

The Backyard Astronomer's Guide

50 Best Sights in Astronomy and How to See Them

Eyewitness Companion: Astronomy

What You Don't Get From Video Vending Machines or Online Movie Vendors

2010-09-16T13:15:00.001-05:00

To answer the above. You don't get any breath of choice from the video vending machine, just the latest new movies on DVD. You want a classic movie? Nope. You want something off-beat, maybe even foreign? Nope.

But you can get those online, you say. Well yeah, you can. But what you can't get is a knowledgeable guide to movies and the glories of our treasure house of cinema. Nope, not unless you dig and if you are an autodidact well ok.

But I know a place where you can get all that you can't get from the above. And guess where that is?

You got it. That's right. The library.

Ordinary Looking People

2010-09-02T15:15:00.003-05:00

The title refers to the leads, male and female, in one of the best TV series no one's ever heard of. It is, of course, British, since here in the US any female actor who is even remotely ordinary looking rarely gets close to playing a lead on a TV series. (Drop Dead Diva being a shining exception.)

The series I am talking about is William and Mary, starring Martin Clune of the blubbery lips and odd ears, and Julie Graham of the gappy teeth and poochy cheeks (she is still much better looking than he and her figure is very cute). She plays a midwife and he plays an undertaker. They meet through a dating agency and it goes on from there through misunderstandings and conflicts as well as the ordinary mishgosh that happens when two single parents try to have a relationship. She has two boys and he has two girls, (one teen and one pre-teen each).

But, this is not just a British version of the Brady Bunch. The two lead characters' professions prevent that. Often an episode will show them, one occupied with bringing life into the world and the other with ushering the dead out of it and comforting their mourners. Sometimes the two get mixed as when Mary has to help a woman deliver a stillborn. That one had me in tears. But don't let that put you off. It was a beautiful episode, strangely uplifting even as it broke my heart.

William and Mary is a series about two ordinary looking, endearing people that is well written and totally involving. It is an experience that is all too rare so don't miss it.

Your brother's keeper

2010-08-16T08:00:00.002-05:00

HOUSE RULES: A NOVEL by Jodi Picoult. Atria, 2010. ISBN 0743296435.

As a super intelligent eighteen-year-old with poor social skills attributed to Asperger’s syndrome (AS), Jacob Hunt is in many ways protected from the real world through accommodations that are made for him at school and at home. Emma, his mother, does everything in her power to keep his world routine and predictable. Jacob and his neurotypical (i.e. “normal”) younger brother, Theo, live by a set of house rules the first being “Take care of your brother; he’s the only one you’ve got.” Jacob’s world is turned upside-down and the number one house rule is put to the test when he is accused and tried for the murder of his tutor.

WHAT ATTRACTED ME TO THE BOOK: Prior to reading this book my knowledge of AS was limited to Kathy Hooperman’s ALL CATS HAVE ASPERGER SYNDROME and to what my hair dresser has told me about her AS son. Reading a fictionalized account of someone with AS was a painless way to learn more about it, although I am well aware that one fiction book, no matter how well researched, won’t make me an expert.

WHAT KEPT ME INTERESTED: The chapters move from character to character giving every one, including Jacob, a voice and a viewpoint. The reader experiences the family dynamic of a single mother who has given up everything of herself in order to raise a child with special needs and of a younger brother who feels neglected and yet occasionally protective of his older brother. The addition of the lawyer to the family dynamic was interesting, too, because he allowed the mother to realize that she could perhaps have a life outside of Jacob. The ending was not a surprise because I already figured out what had happened, but I was interested enough in the characters and the courtroom drama to finish the book. It was not a tidy happy ending and it left a lot of unanswered questions, but I can live with that.

I’D ALSO RECOMMEND: If you want to read more books about AS you might seek out Mark Haddon’s THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. This is a fictionalized diary of an autistic teen’s quest to solve the murder of a neighbor’s poodle. You might also try Francisco X. Stork’s young adult novel MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD. Seventeen-year-old Marcelo faces new challenges, including romance and injustice, when he goes to work for his father in a corporate mail room. For a true life look at Asperger’s try Tim Page’s PARALLEL PLAY: GROWNING UP WITH UNDIAGNOSED ASPERGER’S.

What does your library mean to you?

2010-08-13T11:49:00.004-05:00

I going to go out on a limb here and assume that if you bother to read this blog you are most likely not just a library lover but also a library user. That is not redundant; they are two different things. Many people love the library. They think libraries provide an important service to the community. But they don't actually use the library themselves. They are busy people who have little time to read or select books, audiobooks, DVDs and the like. Then there are library users. These are the folks that need the library. They couldn't possibly buy all the books they use. In some cases they can't purchase the other services libraries provide either--services like computer access to the internet or training on how to use a word processing program or email. In some cases they don't have the knowledge (or feel they don't have the knowledge) to do these services themselves. I am thinking of our early childhood literacy programs (toddler and preschool storytimes), craft programs for older kids or even the book clubs for adults. The library needs library lovers but we also need library users. It is wonderful when the two mesh into one.

My parents were library lovers and users. Neither of my parents were big readers. My mother only checked out craft books and magazines from the library. My father used the library for car repair manuals and once in a while a good nonfiction book like Iaccoca's autobiography. My parents are doers not really thinkers. But both my parents realized that to go far in this world you really needed to be both doers (users) and thinkers (lovers). My sister and I were regulars at the preschool storytimes. I still remember learning the itsy bitsy spider at a library storytime. I had no clue what a waterspout was though. My sister and I were always signed up for the summer reading club. I remember laying on the couch reading the McBroom series one summer.

Libraries have always been a part of my life. Even as an adult the library has served as a refuge. In college, I loved the library basement. It was dark and damp and housed bound copies of art history magazines from the 1920s-1950s. I could lose myself there for hours. When I got out of college, I used the little library in the town I was in to keep myself busy because I couldn't find work. In the mid 90s my parents' home south of Houston did not have air conditioning. I would often retreat to the library because it was air conditioned and I could spend hours browsing the shelves of books. During this summer as the temperature has been over 100 for days in a row, I know there are many Fort Worth residents who are using our libraries as a respite from the heat. Libraries always have and always will provide more than just books.

What are your memories of libraries? Did you grow up in a town with an old Carnegie library? Was the library a cool place to hang out? Did you grow up in a big city with a branch that was like a second home--and a central library that was awe inspiring? Take a moment to share your memories....I love reading them.

All the good ideas are taken...

2010-08-04T18:57:00.009-05:00

Lately a major trend in narrative nonfiction is the "spend some time doing something and then write about it" storyline. Okay, so it isn't exactly a brand new trend since it has been going on for several years. Today at lunch I was reading The Art of Eating In by Cathy Erway. (Ironically, I was reading it while eating OUT at Pei Wei.) Miss Erway decided to not eat out at restaurants for a year and blog about her experiences. She lives in NYC. So I started wondering if there was something *I* could do for a year and write about it. Something interesting and--yes--life changing. I started thinking about what others had already done--because I certainly couldn't DO what someone else had already done.

I could try to live for a year leaving as small a carbon footprint as possible.
Nope already done.
No Impact Man by Colin Beavan

I could try to live like people did in a by-gone era--like in the Bible.
Nope already done.
Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs

Oh and Mr Jacobs also spent a year reading the Encyclopedia Britannica AND wrote about it.
The Know It All by AJ Jacobs

I could try incorporating all the advice I hear on a TV show--like Oprah or read in self-help books.
Nope already done.
Living Oprah by Robyn Okrant
Practically Perfect in Every Way by Jennifer Niesslein (Okay Jennifer spent TWO years but there are a TON of self help books out there!)

I could try to eat only food (heck, why stop with food--only USING stuff) that was produced locally.
Nope already done.
Plenty by Alisa Smith
Farewell My Subaru by Doug Fine

Maybe I could spend a year trying to be happy. That would be a tough one.
SAVED--someone has already done it.
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Maybe I needed to look for a spiritual project.
My Jesus Year by Benjamin Cohen.
Good Book by David Plotz

Give up my car?
The Circumference of Home by Kurt Hoelting

I'm getting desperate. Spend a year training for endurance sports events?
Long Distance by Bill McKibben

I know there are more---Can you think of any?

Or maybe you have a good idea that has NOT been done yet--wanna share it?

The Demon King

2010-07-26T10:03:00.006-05:00

1000 years ago, wizards almost destroyed the world. The Clan and the line of blooded queens struck a deal that saved the world and imposed strict rules on wizards in Fell's March. As part of that deal, the blooded queens spend time in the camps of the Clan to learn about their ways and the high wizard of the wizard council is bonded to the queen. And most important of all, a wizard cannot marry a queen because they cannot be trusted with the power of rule.

Since returning to court, Princess Raisa ana’Marianna has felt the strictures of court life pressing in on her. She longs to return to the camps of the clan where she has some freedom. She wants to enjoy being 16 and go to parties, dance and kiss a boy or two. The last thing she is interested in is being married off to someone. But war is raging in the south and Raisa's mother, Queen Marianna, fears invasion. She wants Raisa settled and the kingdom secure. Politics and politicians are swirling around the Queen. Will she make the right choices for both the kingdom and her daughter? Or, will she make a choice that could pull the kingdom into turmoil much worse than the wars in the south? Eventually, the Queen's choices leave Raisa with only 1 choice-to run and disappear from the kingdom.

At the same time, Hanson "Cuffs" "Hunts Alone" Alister is struggling to stay on the straight and narrow. He has promised his mother that he will give up his life of crime. As streetlord of Rag Market, Cuffs Alister is feared and able to put food on the table for his family. As Han Alister, he struggles to find his place in the world. A place that may or may not include the Clan. The Clan has fostered Han "Hunts Alone" every summer for as long as he can remember. He wants to join his friends, Dancer and Bird, and find a vocation. But fate has different plans for him.

After an unfortunate run-in with a wizard, Han ends up with a powerful wizard amulet. It brings about a series of disasters that cause Han to lose everything and everyone he cares about. Backed into a corner, he learns the mystery about those silver cuffs that encircle his arms. His fate is more than he could ever imagine. Will he embrace it, or will he use the newfound information to exact revenge on all his enemies?

Cinda Williams Chima's new series, Seven Realms, promises to be as good as her last series, Heir. The Demon King is the first installment. Full of twists and turns, the readers are kept on their toes trying to figure out what is going to happen next. A chance encounter between Cuffs & Raisa leaves the reader curious about what their relationship will be in the upcoming books. Three more books are planned in this series with the next installment, The Exiled Queen being released in September of 2010.

The Guiltiest of Pleasures

2010-07-24T16:41:00.004-05:00

I admit it. I love the 1980 movie, Flash Gordon, from Italian producer and schlockmeister, Dino De Laurentiis. We were never supposed to think of Mr. De Laurentiis as a purveyor of high class schlock (if there can be such a thing). He had been involved in quite a few prestige projects. He started as part of the Italian neo-realist film school and even produced for Fellini. But for some reason his own preference was for glossy schlock that, even when it was wildly sucessful like his 1976 remake of King Kong, reeked of excess.

I'm not saying that his stuff didn't have its enjoyable aspects but usually his over the top epics just made me tired. Except for Flash Gordon. I got dragged to it unwillingly by my then boyfriend. He had scored tickets to the New York premiere and he was not going to bypass the opportunity to goggle at celebrities. I don't remember there being any celebrities to see and he being very disppointed but strangely I found the movie to be highly enjoyable. It was like those treats you buy at carnivals (cotton candy, caramel corn balls) all bad for you and completely devoid of any nutrition at all but so, so satisfying.

The Jane Austen Adaptation Question and Answer Period

2010-07-22T18:00:00.002-05:00

Question: Why do the two most notable actors who play Charles Bingley in Pride and Prejudice, Simon Woods in the 2005 movie and Crispin Bonham-Carter in the 1995 BBC production, play the part with goofy hair and dweebish expressions?

Answer: They are only notable because they do play Charles Bingley with goofy hair and a certain dweebishness. There is no reason to remember any actor who plays Charles Bingley in a production of Pride and Prejudice unless they have goofy hair and a suitably dweebish demeanor. I defy you to name any other actor who has ever played Charles Bingley and it is cheating to look it up on the internet.

Question: Why does the 2005 movie give us a Mrs. Bennet who is lovable and cuddly rather than the painfully-embarrassing-to-her-offspring mother that Jane Austen wrote?

Answer: Mistaken casting. On the surface it must have seemed ideal to have Brenda Blethyn, she of the wispy voice, well padded figure and vague air, play the constantly befuddled, highly irritating Mrs. Bennet. But there happened to be one insurmountable problem. Ms. Blethyn's signature character, slightly confused, middle aged but still displaying a certain sexiness has become "beloved." Once that happens the die is cast, if you'll excuse the expression. No way could the actress be allowed to portray Mrs. Bennet in her full unalloyed awfulness.

This phenomenon is also on display in the 1940 movie version with Greer Garson and Laurence Oliver. The character actress, Edna May Oliver, played the dragon Lady Catherine de Bourgh, but the dreadful creature had to be softened because Edna May Oliver's signature character that of the outwardly haughty but inwardly sweet individual was too "beloved" to be messed with.

Question: Why are Austen audio books overwhelmingly narrated by English actresses who have played in productions of Austen works?

Answer: Mistaken marketing. The idea is that us Austen fans would all be rabid to listen to Juliet Stevenson who played the noxious Mrs. Elton in the 1996 movie of Emma, read Persuasion or Lindsay Duncan, who played Lady Bertram in the 1999 Mansfield Park, read Pride and Prejudice. This is a fallacy.

I loved the performances of both actresses in their respective Austen movies but the skills of a truly outstanding audio book narrator they do not possess. Neither of them have the vocal chops of Barbara Rosenblatt whose range of vocal characterization is unsurpassed. In fact, in my humble opinion, if Ms. Rosenblatt were given all of the Austens to narrate, the world, in a small but significant way, would be a better place.

Well, that is all for the Jane Austen Adaptation Question and Answer Period...for now. If you perhaps have any specific questions about any Jane Austen adaptation send it in. I'd be happy to give you an answer. Ta for the nonce.

The Red Pyramid

2010-07-19T11:31:00.004-05:00

Brother & sister, Carter & Sadie Kane, haven't lived under the same roof since the mysterious death of their mother. Sadie went to live with their grandparents and Carter has been traveling the world with his archeologist father. Carter & his father is only allowed to see Sadie 2 times a year.

Carter secretly envys where Sadie gets to live. He would love to dress like a normal teenager instead of the khakis and dress shirts his father insists on and get to stay in one place long enough to make a friend. While Sadie is envious of the time Carter gets to spend with her father.

On the way to pick Sadie up for the bi-annual visit, Carter notices his dad is acting stranger than normal. Once Sadie is in the car with them, Carter's father first visits the site of their mother's death and then rushes the kids off to the British Museum. He tells the children that he is going to set things right. He then proceeds to blow up the Rosetta Stone and disappear. In the process, he has managed unleash several of the Egptian Gods including Set.

Set is determined to bring chaos to the Earth and rule it. Sadie & Carter are immediately drawn into the quest to find their father and to stop Set from unleashing destruction on the world. In order to accomplish their goals, Carter and Sadie must use their knowledge about ancient Egypt and learn about their families' mysterious pasts.

The Red Pyramid is first book Rick Riordan's, author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, new series The Kane Chronicles. In this series, Riordan shifts his focus from greek mythology to egyptian mythology. Fast paced and entertaining, this first book delivers everything that readers have come to expect from Riordan. Sadie and Carter have to learn to work together and trust one another. They are what the readers expect in their heros, courageous, smart, willing to do the right thing, but not without flaws. If the rest of the series reads like this book, Riordan will have another hit on his hands.

Murder and mayhem

2010-07-08T14:33:00.006-05:00

ALCHEMY OF MURDER by Carol McCleary. Forge Books, 2010. ISBN 9780765322036.

Set during the 1889 Paris World’s Fair, pioneering female American reporter, Nellie Bly, is on the hunt for a serial killer whom she has chased from New York and London to Paris. She enlists the help of Jules Verne, Oscar Wilde, Louis Pasteur, Toulouse Lautrec and others in her quest while, in the meantime, she falls in love with the much older Verne. With all this going on there is also a black fever spreading through the poorer neighborhoods of Paris that is putting anarchists up in arms. Read how Nellie meets these challenges while managing to evade arrest by the gendarme.

WHAT ATTRACTED ME TO THE BOOK: I was first drawn to the cover and then by the blurb on the front flap of the book. The combination of the story line involving Louis Pasteur seeking the source of the threatening epidemic and Nellie Bly hunting the serial killer drew me in.

WHAT KEPT ME INTERESTED: The book was action-packed while giving me a sense of what it would have been like to have lived in the poorer parts of Paris in the late 19th Century. I enjoyed the author’s characterizations of Wilde, Pasteur and Lautrec, but found Nellie Bly’s and Jules Verne’s love/hate relationship less convincing. I found myself wondering how many other famous people the author would cram into the story line before all was said and done. I also found myself skeptical of how Nellie managed to track her serial killer across the continents. She was unable to clearly describe the man and yet she could spot him across a crowded room, but, then again, failed to recognize him when they finally came face-to-face. Overlooking these complaints this book was a fun read which, these days, is the main reason I read. I liked it enough to consider reading the next book in the series, The Illusion of Murder.

I’D ALSO RECOMMEND: If you like the 1889 Paris World’s Fair setting, you might want to read Pablo de Santis’ The Paris Enigma: A novel. With the unfinished Eiffel Tower as the backdrop, 12 detectives from around the world unite to find a serial killer. If you want to read a true story of a serial killer and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair check-out Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City.

Summertime and the living is easy....

2010-06-21T10:00:00.011-05:00

Unless you are responsible for creating the next fiscal year's budget. Then the living is anything BUT easy. This is the time of year when the department heads, assistant city managers, city manager, city council and the mayor all start looking at the upcoming year and preparing the budget. It hasn't been an easy process these past few years. Revenues are down but expenses continue to increase. How do you balance the wants and needs of the residents with a diminishing cash flow? You have to make hard choices--just like many of the residents of Fort Worth have had to make hard choices regarding their personal finances.

One question that comes up every year is whether city services like the parks, the pools, the rec centers and even that hallowed institution, the city library, are necessary. Now I could go on extolling the virtues of the library (and there are many) but probably the quickest way to convince the residents of Fort Worth just how essential the library is, is to show you just how much the library SAVES you each time you use it.

Is there some crazy algorithm that only Einstein's protegés could compute that will show you this? Nope. It is as simple as using the library's "How much is your library worth to you?" calculator.

Each year the average Fort Worth resident only pays $24 in taxes to support the library. How much do you get for that $24? Try the calculator and find out! I save about $600 a month by using the Fort Worth Library.

Post your savings as a comment here and let's see who saves the most by using the Fort Worth Library!

So Where Oh Where is Cranky Old Me on American TV?

2010-06-10T17:32:00.003-05:00

With the passing of yet another Golden Girl, Rue McClennhan, I bethought me of how many older women are not on TV these days, at least not American TV. As I go winnowing through my favorite current TV series, the pickings in the older female catagory are pretty slim. There is Leslie Ann Warren who is 64 or thereabouts playing the protagonist's mother in In Plain Sight.

But for crying out loud, LESLIE ANN WARREN! She's about as typical of older women as Lassie is of pooches. And besides, she's playing a ditzy cutey pie. Where oh where are the female versions of the cranky old wise elders that so many of our older male actors get to play a la David McCallum on NCIS or John Noble on Fringe or Brent Spiner on Threshold or Joe Morton on Eureka. You see what I mean? I'm cranky and old and wise (ok, wiseass mostly) but as far as American TV is concerned women like me mostly don't exist.

However, there is one exception, one sterling example, one heartening outlier and it graces my most favorite of current American TV shows, Burn Notice, and the wonderful Sharon Gless, who I have finally forgiven for replacing Meg Foster in Cagney & Lacy, plays the hero's mother and she is old (check), cranky (check) and wise (check). I adore her.

Of course, since I do not see all of the shows on TV there may be one or two more and please let me know who and where they are. Even so, I'll wager, there are not as many as there are male versions of that particular archetype. Not even close.

Oh, yes, here at the Fort Worth Library we have DVDs of Burn Notice, NCIS, Threshold and Eureka (but not Fringe - don't ask me why) for you to check out.

The Ultimate Rescue Dog

2010-06-07T10:00:00.000-05:00

As a Navy Reservist, Mark Feffer was proud to serve his country but never thought he'd be sent to Afghanistan. He had been deployed several times to Navy even during the 1st Gulf War, but had never thought he serve a land based operation. Through an unusual set of circumstances, he ended being deployed to Afghanistan ans was only concerned with doing his job well and coming home to his family safely.

Soon after arriving to base, Mark met Cinnamon, a stray dog who had been living on the base on her own since she was a few months old. Cinnamon was a sweet, well-liked dog who was taken care of by the entire base. She was fed table scraps and any other snacks she could get from the men on base. As she grew up, she was able to bring great joy to the men and many families starting providing her with treats in their care packages to the base.

When it came time for Mark to leave for home, he had become attached to the puppy and was afraid of what would become of her if left on the base. This was especially true because it was rumored that her mother had been removed from the base and killed by an Afghan soldier. He began to look into ways to get Cinnamon back to the States with him.

He couldn't believe his luck when a DOD dog handler agreed to ferry Cinnamon back to the States as he was going home for leave. Mark was also getting ready to leave Afghanistan when he got a call from his wife that Cinnamon did not get off the plane with the handler. The handler wouldn't really say what had happened to the dog, and only told the family that Cinnamon was denied boarding in Turkey and he didn't know what happened to her.

Mark and his family were devastated to learn that their beautiful puppy was wandering somewhere in Turkey on her own. Most of the family believed that she was lost to them forever. But Mark's sister decided that she was going to find Cinnamon no matter what. With that belief, she set off on a 44 day odyssey to find the missing dog and bring her home to their family.

Saving Cinnamon by Christine Sullivan documents the journey Christine followed in her quest to find 1 missing dog stranded thousands of miles from home. It is a sad, funny and ultimately heart-warming story about how 1 dog changed the lives of so many people.

Wet Nurse's Tale

2010-06-02T11:33:00.014-05:00

WET NURSE’S TALE by Erica Eisdorfer. Putnam, 2009. 9780399155765.

Poor and homely scullery maid, Susan Rose, works at the nearby Great House hoping to make a better life for herself and dreaming of finding lifelong companionship like her more attractive sisters. When she finds herself pregnant by the lord of the manor’s son, Freddie, her abusive father insists that she leave her newborn and become a wet nurse to make money for the family. Susan’s infant son dies while she is away and she finds some solace in caring for the other infants. In the meantime she has a brief affair with a Jewish dentist, but when she is unable to find work she is forced to move back home. She resumes her trysts with Freddie and soon discovers she is pregnant again. This time her father steals her baby boy and sells him. Although illiterate, Susan attempts to find and regain her son through sheer pluck and determination. The ending is left open as to whether she succeeds in her initial goal of finding lifelong companionship, but the reader is left with the feeling that whatever happens, Susan Rose will come out ahead.

WHAT ATTRACTED ME TO THE BOOK: I am drawn to books written about the Victorian era. I particularly like books written from the perspective of the downstairs staff. The fact that the book was described as being slightly bawdy didn’t hurt either. The sexual relations in the book were treated as matter-of-fact rather than a means of titillation.

WHAT KEPT ME INTERESTED: Interspersed between chapters of Susan Rose’s story are mini-statements from women of the day explaining their reasons for turning their children over to a wet nurse. These range from illness (mental and physical), death of the mother, not wanting to lose one’s figure and others. This and other historical details add an extra layer of richness and make the book more interesting.

I’D ALSO RECOMMEND: Michael Cox’s THE GLASS OF TIME. In the mid-1870s, 19 year-old orphan Esperanza poses as a lady’s maid in an attempt to uncover the baroness’ secrets which may include the murder of a previous servant. In THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE by Michel Faber 19 year-old Sugar escapes her life of prostitution and rises through Victorian society when she becomes of mistress of a powerful perfume magnate, but finds that it may not be all that she hoped for.

The Messenger

2010-05-28T07:49:00.007-05:00

Memorial Day is upon us again. And I think for the last one I talked about a movie that had just come out called The Messenger. I mentioned it in the context of discussing movies about the recent and current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and how they seem to do so poorly at the box office. At that time The Messenger was the latest but since there has been The Hurt Locker which has won the Oscar for Best Movie. The Messenger was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Best Screeplay.

When I wrote about The Messenger before, I had not yet seen it. Now I have. It is out on DVD and the library has it. I want to say that I am grateful to it. It follows the activities of two soldiers who are on Casuality Notification duty, two of the poor sods whose duty it is to notify families of deaths of loved ones in war. We see them deliver the news to six families in the course of the movie and we see the impact on both the families and the men who must bear the bad news.

At one point in my life, I could have been in one of those families. My father was in Vietnam for a year. My mother and I and my little brother and sisters waited for him or for a messenger like those two in the movie. It was not a fun time. Watching that movie brought it vividly back. My father came home alive and we were lucky. Watching that movie brought home to me just how lucky we were.

This movie addresses the cost of war and the losses it inflicts on families of the fallen and on those who fight it. Whether or not we believe these costs are justified, it is meet that we face them. This is a beautifully acted, written and photographed tale. In honor of Memorial Day, you could not make a better choice.

Best Laid Plans....

2010-05-24T15:33:00.011-05:00

BLACKOUT by Connie Willis. Ballantine Books, 2010. 9780553803198.

Oxford University. The year is 2060. Historians travel back in time to gather first-hand information that may not have been covered in history books. In this case, several historians have travelled back to World War II. Posing as an American reporter, Michael travels to Dunkirk to witness heroes in action as British soldiers are rescued by civilians in a dire situation. Merope acts as a servant in an English country manor in order to observe what it is like for London’s evacuated children only to find herself in the middle of measles quarantine. Polly works as a London shop girl in the middle of the Blitz to experience civilian reactions to the incessant bombing by German aircraft. As with all historians/time travelers they have carefully studied each situation in order to avoid problems, but all of them discover that even the best laid plans can go awry. Suddenly the once safe and reliable system of time travel is showing significant glitches. They have been taught that no historian can possibly change the past, but recent evidence indicates that this may no longer be the case. Will the butterfly effect prevent them from getting back to their own time? Will they live to attempt it?

WHAT ATTRACTED ME TO THE BOOK: The author’s first time travel book, DOOMSDAY BOOK, published in 1992, is one of my all time favorite books so when I heard about this book I jumped on it.

WHAT KEPT ME INTERESTED: Realistic, interesting characters in difficult situations kept me reading. The historical details gave me an understanding of what the British dealt with in WWII and did it better than any cut-and-dried history text book. My only disappointment, granted it is a big one, is that I won’t find out what happens until the conclusion comes out in October 2010 when ALL CLEAR is due to be released.

I’D ALSO RECOMMEND: Reading this book makes me want to go back and re-read the author’s DOOMSDAY BOOK. In 2048 history student Kirvin is transported back to a 14th century English village just in time for the Black Plague to arrive. Meanwhile, back in the future, the British are dealing with an epidemic of their own. Michael Crichton’s TIMELINE also presents time travelers in distress when a group of young scientists answer a call for help from their mentor that was sent to them from medieval France. While it may not be considered great literature it makes for a swashbuckling good time.

Thanks Mom

2010-05-09T07:30:00.000-05:00

Ah. Mother's Day. I will make the obligatory call today to my mother. As I have grown older I have come to appreciate my mother (and my father) much more than I ever did in my youth. And by youth I mean from about 8ish up through say 28ish. So on this Mother's Day I want to spotlight some of my favorite mother picture books.

Even Firefighters Hug Their Moms by Christine MacLean

An imaginative boy pretends to be a firefight er, policeman, construction worker, and other busy people, but he realizes that it is important to take time to give his mom a hug.

Honey Baby Sugar Child by Alice Faye Duncan

A mother expresses her everlasting love for her child.

Te Amo, Bebe, Little One by Lisa Wheeler

Share a mother's lilting love song to her newborn as he turns into a toddler, in a pleasing mix of English and Spanish lyrical verse.

Baya, Baya, Lulla-by-a by Megan McDonald

As a mother in rural India sings to her baby, a weaverbird builds a nest for its young.

On Mother's Lap by Ann Herbert Scott

A small Eskimo boy discovers that Mother's lap is a very special place with room for everyone.

My Monster Mama Loves Me So by Laura Lueck

(This is my favorite mom book.)

A young monster describes all the things its mother does to show she loves it.

LARIAT LIST: Texas Library Association's New Adult Fiction Reading List

2010-05-03T15:23:00.003-05:00

For the past eleven months, I served on the "task force" to select the innagural list for the newly formed TLA Lariat List. Texas Library Association wanted to start a list that would be on parr with it's recommended lists for children (Bluebonnet) and Young Adults (Lone Star), but for adult fiction. The Lariat lists the best fiction books published in 2009. This was my first time to serve on such committee - though several members were veterens of the other two TLA lists, or of the American Library Association's Notable Books list.

The end result - the first ever TLA Lariat List.

Twelve librarians were selected from libraries all around the state. Some of us were with public libraries, some school, some academic. Our service consisted of reading reviews of upcoming fiction books and suggesting them to the committee. Then, as the books were published, we'd read them. If we decided we didn't like them, we'd withdraw our suggestions. If we did like them, we'd nominate them. Every member was alotted fifteen nominations. (Not everyone had that many - I myself had eleven). The books had to be fiction, and the underlying criteria for the list was that the book must be "a pleasure to read." Not necessarily feel good reads - one of our nominees was Hans Fallada's fascinating, 600 page saga of German civilian resistance to the Nazis: "Every Man Dies Alone" - but books that were outstanding examples in their fields. We ran the gamut - Mysteries, Romances, Historical - we have it all.

There were some bumps in the road for the first committee - we had some trouble getting all the books - as we were largely depending on our local libraries for the books - and some members had to depend on Interlibrary Loan. We're hoping that, as the list gains traction and the economy improves, publishers will be more willing to send copies of the suggested titles to the committe members.

The final list consists mainly of books I liked a lot.

It's missing some that I really wanted on there.

And there are a couple that make me go "Hmmmmmmmm..."

I'm pretty sure everyone else feels the same way. Such is democracy. But I got to know some really cool people - and got to read a bunch of things I wouldn't ordinarily picked up. I also know that I would never make it as a book critic. I value my slow, lazy reading habits too much - plus, I don't really like the pressure of passing judgement on an author's work. I'd prefer to just put the book down and keep it to myself. All in all, though - it was a great experience for me. Now excuse me while I go read some non-fiction and watch trash TV.

Name your poison....

2010-04-27T16:22:00.010-05:00

THE POISONER’S HANDBOOK: MURDER AND THE BIRTH OF FORENSIC MEDICINE IN JAZZ AGE NEW YORK by Deborah Blum. Penguin Press, 2010. 1594202435.

Covering two decades of New York City history (1915 to 1936), Deborah Blum looks at the burgeoning field of forensics through the study of poisons and their effect on the human body. Prior to this time, poison was considered the perfect murder because it was virtually untraceable in the human body. Looking at the chemical make-up, toxic effects and sources of each, the author concentrates on chloroform, methyl alcohol, cyanide, arsenic, mercury, carbon monoxide, radium and thallium. Working chronologically, the author offers vignettes of famous New York City poisonings. The reader learns that through the tenacity of New York’s first trained Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Charles Norris and others the field of medical jurisprudence makes great advances and for the first time forensic data is deemed viable in the courtroom.

WHAT ATTRACTED ME TO THE BOOK: The cover and title caught my attention. I enjoy true crime and medical nonfiction as long as it is not too gory.

WHAT KEPT ME INTERESTED: This book is dense with information. Having liked chemistry I was able to keep up with most of the science, but it was the infamous poisoning cases dispersed throughout the book that kept me reading. You learn about Barnum and Bailey’s famous Blue Man, female clock factory workers with disintegrating bones, poisoned pies being served at a diner and more. You also see that Prohibition was not succeeding in stopping alcohol consumption. People were dying or being blinded daily due to bootleg liquor. Going to a speakeasy for a cocktail became a game of Russian roulette. The Industrial age brought about a lot of new chemicals. The newly formed FDA did not have the power it has today and people of that era quickly became unknowing guinea pigs. Big business had very little concern for the health of its workers and its consumers.

I’D ALSO RECOMMEND: If you like science mixed in with your true crime, check-out Erik Larson’s THUNDERSTRUCK. At the turn of the 20th Century, Dr. Hawley Crippen attempts to escape London by luxury line after murdering his wife only to be apprehended through the use of Marconi’s newly developed trans-Atlantic wireless transmissions. This proves to be a turning point for this new technology because it made the public realize its power. If it is poison that interests you, go for John Emsley’s ELEMENTS OF MURDER: A HISTORY OF POISON. Covering several centuries of infamous poisoners and their victims, this book looks at 5 deadly chemicals – mercury, antimony, arsenic, lead and thallium. Interestingly enough, each of these was at one time or another lauded for its special beauty or health benefits. For a more hands-on approach, look at Cathy Cobb’s CRIME SCENE CHEMISTRY FOR THE ARMCHAIR SLEUTH. Using fictional scenarios this book gives 25 scientific demonstrations using ordinary household objects to illustrate forensic chemical concepts.

My Name is Kathryn and I'm a list maker

2010-04-25T12:31:00.004-05:00

I love lists. I love making them and I love reading other people's lists. What brings me to this confession a la AA style is I make lists but they don't often become Done lists. They are lost out in the To Do list netherworld.

What kinds of lists do I have sitting around? Well, there is the mystery series to read list, the nonfiction to read list, the recipes to cook list, music CDs to hear list, movies to watch list--I think you get the picture.

These lists are on scraps of paper, old Excel files, numerous steno pads, web sites like Good Reads or Library Thing, my never ending queue on NetFlix, in my account on the library's web site--again I think you get the picture.

Where do I find other people's lists to browse to see if there are things on their lists I need to add to my lists. The internet is a great place. I really like looking at other libraries' lists especially if they have staff picks. Here are some of my favorite sites for books and more:

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Staff Picks

These picks include well thought out annotations that really help in deciding whether a title is "list worthy" for me.

Santa Clara County Library

These are great because there is a good mix of genres and formats. Plus they give a nice little bio of the staff member making the recommendation.

Multnomah County Library

Those folks out in the rainy Pacific Northwest sure love to read (but then what else do you do when it rains all the time!). These staff picks have short succinct one sentence annotations. The lists go back to 2005.

Santa Monica Public Library

This list has good annotations (more than a sentence to grab your attention here) and let's you know what the reviewers like to read so you can focus only on the folks who recommend the genres you already read.

Boca Raton Public Library

These lists usually have a nice mix of titles. The lists have short annotations and a unique feature that tells you in what area of the library the recommender works (circulation, page, collection development.)

Hennepin County Library

Okay you could lose some serious time poking around Hennepin's book lists. Right now the list they are featuring is Disasters. I am a disaster junkie so this just added about 70 titles to my "to read" list. That's more than a YEAR'S worth of reading for me...oh my

Random House Staff Picks

Okay so this isn't a library but these folks see what the libraries are going to see first. They know what they are going to be putting the big advertising bucks behind. If I see something here that I like I know to get my request in early so I won't have to wait too long to read it.

State Library of Tasmania

It is always interesting for me to see what people around the world are reading. So I like to check this out ever so often.

The Times 110 Best Books: The Perfect Library

Okay so this is a static list but at 110 it will take a while for me to work through it. The titles are not what you would necessarily find on an American Best of list which makes it all the more interesting to me.

I also have several books I use to generate my reading lists:

Anything librarian extraordinaire Nancy Pearl has written.

What to Read by Mickey Pearlman

This is an older title so the books in it are not "au currant" but many of them are titles that have withstood the test of time and are still great reads.

Libraries Unlimited is a publisher that produces quite a few books about books.

and since I am a mystery lover Detecting Women is another of my go to books when I need something to read (for fun.)

And if I need a good film I go here:

Britmovie

Red Cliff

2010-04-22T15:51:00.006-05:00

In my on-going crusade to get people to watch foreign films with subtitles, I will from time to time recommend one that has recently grabbed my attention and admiration. One such is Red Cliff directed by John Woo. Although John Woo is now an acclaimed Hollywood director of such action films as Mission Impossible 2, he once was considered the best Chinese director of action films such as The Killer starring Chow Yun-Fat. In fact, he is still considered one of the best directors of action films in the entire world bar none.

For Red Cliff he has gone back to his Chinese roots to film a story that has been called the Chinese Iliad about an epic battle in the third century AD, in what the Chinese refer to as The Three Kingdoms Period. The version he released in China was in two parts and over four hours long. The version released in the U.S. was trimmed to 2 1/2 hours. But now the four hours plus, two part version is available on DVD and we've got it here at the Fort Worth Library. Yep.

Oh, man, I saw the DVD on the new materials shelf and immediately my mouth started to water. There it was, a huge splashy historical cornucopia of juicy acting, amazing set piece battle scenes, lots of intrigue, treachery, glorious heroism and everything, just everything. At least that is what it seemed to promise and, boy, did it deliver.

I sat glued, open-mouthed and practically drooling, for four hours plus and it seemed to pass as fast as a dream I didn't want to wake up from. So as soon as it was done, I watched the whole thing over again. I am going to buy a copy so I can own it and watch it whenever I want. If I start talking about the acting and the scenery and the costuming and...well...I'll never stop. So just trust me and check it out. OK?

A Man with a plan...or in this case a library with a plan

2010-04-10T17:17:00.008-05:00

"Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

To know which way you need to go to achieve a goal you must first know what that goal is.

The Fort Worth Library has a plan and after reading it over, I think it is a good plan. Libraries like other businesses like to create plans be they called strategic plans, long range plans, or comprehensive plans. Back in 2004 the library created a long range services plan. This plan focused on bringing the people of Fort Worth the services they desired. It was a 5 year plan and those 5 years are up. Did we complete everything we set out to do? Not quite. Did we complete a lot of the things we set out to do? We did. The Library has improved the collections we offer for circulation. We now offer DVDs, audiobooks on CD, more copies of bestsellers, more general reading items and fewer highly technical/specialized texts, more computers, and we have adopted new technologies, like downloadable audiobooks and self check-out machines. These are the things the residents of Fort Worth told us they wanted.

As our work on upgrading our services has come to fruition, it is time to look at other aspects of our libraries. Unfortunately, as our collections and services raced into the first decade of the 21st century our infrastructure did not. Many of the libraries in Fort Worth date from the 1960s when computers were housed in whole buildings and the thought of having one the size of a magazine (a netbook) or smaller were the things of science fiction. Our libraries can't handle the electrical and data wiring needed for the volume of computers necessary for the public or even the staff in some locations. Anyone who has ever dreamed of buying a historic home and restoring it knows the cost of retrofitting the electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems can be astronomical. That is why with so many of the Fort Worth Libraries it just makes economic sense to build new state of the art buildings that can not only accommodate the technology of today but also forsees future needs.

Change is hard. Buildings hold memories. For many of us our neighborhood library contains many special memories from our childhood. But some of the reasons we have such good memories of these places is because they were *the* place to be. They were hip and happening. There were plenty of comfortable places to sit and quiet areas to study. Today's kids need computers for almost every aspect of their lives. Their teachers demand their homework assignments to be done on a computer. If a child does not have a computer at home, where can they go? Why, the library of course. But if that library's wiring or space will only allow six computers will that child get to use one? How long is the wait? At some locations, the wait for a computer can be so long that someone who comes in after dinner won't be able to use one that night. By building new buildings that are state of the art we can provide more computers and better assistance with those computers than we can with our present buildings. New buildings can provide needed space for computer labs, meeting rooms, better shelving arrangements so aisle are wide enough for wheelchairs, electric scooters, modern strollers, or even just two people at the same time!

Losing a local library is an emotional issue. Trust me librarians don't like closing libraries any more than the users of those libraries like it. But if the closure of one facility means the creation of a much better facility that can accommodate the full influx of afterschool kids in the afternoon, the seniors and stay-at-home moms in the morning, parents and kids who need homework help after dinner and folks who stop in on the weekends to pick up a DVD or a new book to read then the trade off is acceptable in my opinion.

To read the entire 20/20 Vision plan, click here

To make your voice heard attend a public meeting:

Monday April 12 at 6:30pm

Riverside Library

2913 Yucca Ave

Tuesday April 13 at 12:30pm

Ella Mae Shamblee Library

1062 Evans Ave.

Let's hear it for making our libraries state-of-the-art by 2020!

Murder in the 19th Century

2010-04-07T10:37:00.018-05:00

31 BOND STREET: A NOVEL OF MURDER, INNOCENCE, AND POWER IN NEW YORK CITY by Ellen Horan. Harper, 2010. 978-0-06-1773969.

What socially acceptable options does a wife and mother in pre-Civil War New York have when her once wealthy husband dies and leaves her virtually penniless? Is it wrong to portray herself as a well-to-do widow in order to attract a wealthy suitor? Emma Cunningham does just that and thinks she has solved her problems when she meets Dr. Harvey Burdell while on vacation in Saratoga Springs. Emma and her daughters move into the doctor’s house as lodgers and Emma becomes the manager of the bachelor’s household fully expecting that the arrangement will soon lead to marriage. Her plans come to a screeching halt when Dr. Burdell is found murdered. The public, the media, and prominent city officials are quick to accuse Emma of the crime. Was Emma capable of murder or was there more to Dr. Burdell than his lucrative dental practice? Only lawyer Henry Clinton is willing to risk his career and come to her defense.

WHAT ATTRACTED ME TO THE BOOK: The library received a pre-publication review copy of the book and it caught my attention because the novel is loosely based on one of the most sensational murder cases of the time.

WHAT KEPT ME INTERESTED: This account moves back and forth between events leading up to the murder and the court proceedings. A lot of the book is conjecture and the final outcome is somewhat sad, but I found it believable. It covers a lot of relevant topics of the day – corruption in government, the abolitionist movement, the treatment of Native Americans and more.

I’D ALSO RECOMMEND: Joel Rose’s Blackest Bird: A Novel of Murder in Nineteenth Century New York is based on the sensational 1841 murder of Mary Rogers. Lawrence Goldstone’s Anatomy of Deception is a medical thriller set in late 1880s Philadelphia and looks at the growing science of forensics. Set in late-Victorian London, Gerry Brightwell’s Dark Lantern gives an accurate depiction of upstairs/downstairs life while exploring the burgeoning forensic science of anthropometry.

The Fate of the Grey Sisters

2010-04-05T11:32:00.001-05:00

Upon the pending death of Henry VIII's son, Edward VI, the protestants in England were willing to do anything to stay in power including excluding the rest of Henry's children, Mary & Elizabeth, and finding a suitable replacement among other members of the Tudor family. They convinced Edward to declare his sister illegitimate and select his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, as his successor.

This selection was extremely controversial and as a result, Lady Jane Grey ruled England for only 9 days. Many stories have been told about Lady Jane, most of them false, but none have been told about her sisters, Mary & Katherine.

The Sisters who Would be Queen by Leanda De Lisle is an in depth account of the lives of the Grey sisters and their families. De Lisle has uncovered a lot of unknown information about the struggles, beliefs and dangers faced by these fascinating women. She traces them from their births during Henry VIII's reign to the last sister's death during the reign of Elizabeth I. This period of time in England is full of intrigue, suspicion, murder, treason and questions of who is sleeping with who; a regular soap opera. Even though this is history, De Lisle makes a great effort to not make it boring. A definite must read!

Skipping Through the Movies

2010-04-03T14:33:00.007-05:00

Part of what I do as a Media Librarian is assess the DVDs that patrons report to us as damaged. It is an interesting study in communication. I will take a DVD off the mending shelf and read the note that a patron has thoughtfully appended to it. They usually say something like this,

"Bad DVD"

or this,

"DVD scratched"

or this,

"DVD stops"

or some other variation on that theme.

They are rarely, if ever, precise about where the damage occurs on the disc. I've never gotten a note that says something like, "DVD skips badly in scene number 15." Nope, not ever.

So, how do I check for this reported damage that could be anywhere on a movie that runs 90 to 120 minutes or sometimes longer? Well, what I don't do is get myself a vast supply of popcorn and sit all day in the back workroom watching movies on DVD, darnit. Instead, after giving the disc a good cleaning, I skip quickly through each DVD, from scene to scene to see if it misbehaves. And if it doesn't it goes back in the collection for checkout but with a notation that it has once been reported damaged so that if it comes back a second time, it gets discarded. That's the best I can do unless you really do want your tax dollars to go to me for watching DVDs all the way through all day. I wouldn't complain. That would actually be my dream job.

I assure you that skipping quickly through a movie is not all that entertaining. But, I have noticed some interesting things while doing it. For instance, there are many current day movies that I can skip through from scene to scene without once landing on a bit of dialog, that is people actually talking to one another. I guess writing dialog for the likes of Steven Segal or that Van Damme character is really rather pointless. But it does make one long for action heroes like those portrayed by Jimmy Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. They were as tough as any these days, but they talked tough too, fast and snappy with quips, comebacks and wisecracks that showed not only could they clean your clock physically but they could tap dance all over you verbally too.

Sometimes skipping through a movie will set me ruminating on various things about the actors like for instance, while skipping through the latest Indiana Jones epic, I found myself thinking about how old Harrison Ford is looking these days and how when he cracks that whip, he looks like he just popped a hernia. Then I thought how nice it was to have Karen Allen back playing the character of Marion Ravenwood and how she should have been a series regular all along instead of having the director's girlfriend foisted on us for the second in the series and then other equally forgettable actresses for the others. Then I wondered why the powers that be decided that it was a good idea to make that amiable nerdy boy Shia whatshisname, who did such a good job being amiable and nerdy in Holes, into an action hero ala the young Harrison Ford. I can never figure these things out.

And, finally, I marveled at how forgettable almost the entire movie was. I had watched the whole thing when it first came out (on my own time of course) and I completely forgot about the characters of both the villainess and the old groady guy, who is English I think. Wow! And to think, I can still describe the first Indiana Jones movie practically scene for scene. So you see, skipping through the movies is not only work, it can also be pretty depressing. Anyway, I didn't find the damage, at least not the damage I was looking for, so the DVD is back in the collection for check out. Hopefully, the cleaning I gave it took care of the problem, if there is one. It almost always does.

Around the world in 80 books

2010-03-28T00:08:00.006-05:00

I always dreamed of traveling the world. When I was in sixth grade I found an old Pan Am book about all the countries they flew to. I would spend countless hours with that book and a world map created the perfect journeys. I have seen quite a bit of the United States but my foreign travel is highly deficient. I have only been to two foreign countries: Canada and England. Maybe that is why I am such an Anglophile.

When I went off to college I thought I would major in political science and German. I figured poli sci would be a good background for the Foreign Service. But things changed and for the next six semesters I was an art history major. So the German coursework wasn’t a total waste and neither was the French coursework I had also taken. But then I decided I needed to have a career that let me help people--that would allow me to help change the world. That was how I ended up with geography. Geography and change the world how does that work you are probably asking yourself. My area of geography was political economy and international development. But I never used my degree. I found my way to library school. But I still want to travel. In fact I am writing this while sitting on a plane flying over the Great Salt Lake. I don’t travel much but I dream about it. So how do I satisfy myself when I’m “jonesing” for a travel fix? I read of course!

I enjoy reading travel guides. Not Frommer’s or Fodor’s but Lonely Planet, Moon, DK Eyewitness, those guides that really talk about the local flavor of a place. Also Moon and DK are chocked full of fantastic photographs. I love reading hiking guidebooks for different parts of the country, too. Today before leaving Portland, OR I made it to the Hoyt Arboretum. What an awesome place.

It is the kind of place that makes me contemplate my place in this great big universe. You could even see Mt St Helen’s from one spot.

It is also fun to read about others’ travel experiences. There are so many places I know I will never go but by reading travelogues or histories about far flung places (and not so far flung places) I am broadening my internal data bank of knowledge. I will have more frames of reference when faced with making decisions or just when discussing this crazy world with my fellow cosmic travelers.

Lately my interest has been countries that were once colonial outposts. What life was life during the period of Colonialism and how the country transitioned from that to home rule. Then I want to read about how the countries are now. Some countries were able to make the transition to self rule seamlessly and painlessly but others have suffered from wide spread corruption and internal strife. I find these dynamics fascinating.

So while I may not ever make it to The Congo, Somalia, Pitcairn Island or India, I can pick up a book and be instantly transported there. That truly is the power of books.

To get your travel groove on try these titles to track down some good books:

Traveler's Reading Guides: Background Books, Novels, Travel Literature and Articles

Volume 1: Europe

Volume 2: North America

Volume 3: Rest of the World

These titles actually pull together pieces about the areas/countries:

The Smiles of Rome: A Literary Companion for Readers and Travelers

Reader's Companion to South Africa

For the Love of Ireland: A Literary Companion For Readers and Travelers

Reader's Companion to Ireland

Reader's Companion to Alaska

Reader's Companion to Mexico

Extras! Extras!

2010-03-26T13:13:00.006-05:00

When I learned last January that Fox and Paramount were stripping the extras and special features from the DVD's that were being sold to libraries as well as those that were being sold for rental to Blockbuster, Netflix and Redbox, I thought, "How dumb is that?" However, I guess it does make a limited amount of sense, if you are desperately trying to think of ways to continue milking a phenomenal cash cow, that is producing DVD's for pennies and having people buy them for $10.00 to $20.00 or more rather than renting or checking them out or, nowadays, downloading them. (Supposedly, the sale of DVD's through such outlets as Walmart etc has dropped something like 48% over the past couple of years.)

The thing is I don't think it is going to help. As enamoured as I am of "making of" featurettes and commentaries, I'm not going to buy a DVD rather than rent or check it out solely on the strength of them, especially if I haven't seen them and have no clue as to their quality.

On the other hand, I have bought a DVD or two after having checked them out from the library at least partly because the extras were so good, ie: the commentary on Preston Sturgis' The Lady Eve is so well done I consider it almost as necessary to own as a good book. However, I can do very well without the featurette or commentary on The Last Starfighter, wherein the movie makers were mostly congratulating each other on being the first to use computer generated special effects (a big, big yawn as far as I am concerned).

I almost feel bad for the studios who are trying this ploy, because it is so very feeble and in one case so very embarrassing. Last November, Disney found itself the target of irate consumers, because some genius decided that closed captioning was a "special feature" and stripped it out of the rental copies of UP. Yep, the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities who couldn't really enjoy the movie in the theaters and waited for it to come out as a rental or hit the shelves of their local libraries found that they had to buy the thing retail if they wanted to enjoy it as fully as the rest of humanity. Oh, dear.

This is the kind of thing that happens when reality is not faced. New technologies and delivery systems have changed everything, and denying DVD renters access to "special features" ain't going to make it all go away. It just makes one wonder how many lifetimes some people have to endure before they accumulate any common sense at all.

Anyway, how do you guys feel about not seeing the special features on say, Night at the Museum. Battle of the Smithsonian? Does that really just bum you out? Or could you care less?

Immortality after death

2010-03-25T13:31:00.012-05:00

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Crown Publishers, 2010. 9781400052172. Click here for the audio book edition.

To scientists her code name is “HeLa,” short for Henrietta Lacks, a poor African-American tobacco farmer of mixed-blood Although, the 31 year-old died of cancer almost 60 years ago, her legacy lives on through her cells. Hers’ were the first human cells to be successfully grown in culture medium and have been reproduced continuously ever since. They have been used in developing the polio vaccine, uncovering the effects of the atom bomb, and helping lead to in-vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping. Her cells have even been into space via satellite. Despite this she is buried in an unmarked grave and her family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than 20 years after her death when researchers began to contact her offspring for research purposes.

Among all the science is the story of a family that is proud of what their mother’s cells have accomplished yet fears and feels betrayed by the medical community. This book touches on the dark history of medical experimentation on African Americans, bioethics and legal battles that will determine whether or not we own our bodies.

WHAT ATTRACTED ME TO THE BOOK: I read an interview with the author about the book. It caught my attention because I am drawn to science and medical nonfiction that brings the human aspects to light.

WHAT MADE ME FINISH IT: Actually, I am not quite done with it. I am switching back and forth between 3 books right now, but I will keep reading because I am sustaining hope that somehow Henrietta’s family benefited from her legacy. It is also interesting to me because Henrietta is almost the exact age of my mother. I can’t help but wonder how things might have been different for Henrietta and her family if she had been a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant like my mother.

I’D ALSO RECOMMEND: If you want to read more about medical experimentation on African Americans check-out Michael Uschan’s The Tuskegee Experiments: Forty Years of Medical Racism. If you are interested in reading a somewhat irreverent examination of what really happens to human bodies that have been donated to science check out Mary Roach’s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.

ENCOUNTERS OF THE FAVORITE AUTHOR KIND

2010-02-24T14:26:00.001-06:00

We’ve been having author visitations lately here at the FWPL. And it got me to reminiscing.

At one point in my life, I was in a position where I met authors on a fairly regular basis. I sometimes worked for a bookstore that specialized in science fiction and fantasy and as is the case for most bookstores the big coup was to get a well known author in for a signing. I would often be asked to help. Most of my experiences were unremarkable and all I can remember of them were things like Anne McCaffrey was large and jolly, Arthur C. Clarke was thin and reserved, Harlan Ellison was exactly as sarcastic as one would expect him to be and so on. I liked most of those authors’ works but I couldn’t really say that any were “favorites.”

There was one though, and I will not name him, whose work sustained me when I was a teenager because he, of all the “Golden Age” science fiction authors, wrote stories with intrepid, intelligent and resourceful young women protagonists. My gratitude for that was boundless. It still is, though it was challenged a bit when I finally managed to meet him. An acquaintance of mine worked for him and right before she introduced me, she whispered in my ear, “Don’t turn your back on him. He’s a pincher.”

It discombobulated me so badly that I can’t remember a thing he said. When it was done, I backed away from him the whole length of the shop. I must have looked like an absolute loon. Regardless, his books are still some of my favorites. Even as a nascent feminist, I found I could forgive him that streak of male roguishness. Of course, I don’t know how I would have felt had I actually been pinched. It was a dangerous moment.

Another close encounter of the favorite author kind had a sadder outcome. I had fallen in love with the work of new fantasy author. He dealt mostly in hard edged retellings of myth and legend. His prose was remarkable; it was poetic yet perfectly and wondrously readable. It blew me away. When I heard that he would be at the shop for a signing, I was ecstatic. I had all sorts of questions to ask him about his use of mythic characters and how he developed his unique style. Oh…was I in for a deflating.

A fussy little man showed up with a publicist in tow, he exhibited not an ounce of humor or personality. All he would talk about, even to the fans who crowded around him for autographs, was how his books were marketed. I am sorry to say that from that time on I have been unable to enjoy anything he writes. That is the danger when you meet “favorite” authors. Your enjoyment of their work is at risk. I’m not sure an autograph is worth it.

How about you? Do you have favorite author encounters of note? Did they deflate or did they fulfill your expectations?

The Alternate World War I

2010-02-08T13:05:00.004-06:00

Deryn Sharp is an unusual girl. More than anything, she wants to serve in the British Air Service. But it is 1914 and women are not welcome in the military. Women are expected to stay home, wear skirts and attend tea parties. With the help of her brother, Deryn becomes Dylan and is off to join up.

Deryn's airships are not your average airplanes. They are living breathing creatures. Scientists have discovered a way to use animals such as whales and octipi as flying machines. On her first day in the service, she shows amazing valor and air sense when she is put in the cockpit of a Huxley, a half air balloon/half squid, and it floats away in a storm. She is rescued by the Leviathan, a giant whale dirigible. In that moment, Deryn sets off on the adventure of a life time.

At about the same time, Alek, AKA Aleksander Ferninand, prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is pulled out of bed in the middle of night. His parents have been killed and as the possible heir to the throne, he must flee his home and go into hiding. He and some trusted companions take off in their Stormwalker, a mechanical machine similar to a tank but with legs instead of treads.

Through a twist of fate, Deryn's airship crash lands outside Alek's hideout. Although he is counseled against it, Alek decides that he must do whatever necessary to assist Deryn and the crew of the Levianthan. However, he knows that he must keep his true identity hidden at all costs. And so begins an uneasy alliance between the Darwinists (Deryn & the crew of the British airship) and the Clankers (Alek and his loyal servants) to escape from the Germans and make it to possible safety in the Ottoman Empire.

In Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld sets an alternative history for World War I. The allies seem so different with one group being obsessed with natural science and manipulation of DNA (Darwinists) while the other group is focused on mechanical machines (Clankers). Westerfeld's forte is world building and while this one is set close to real history, it is certainly just foreign enough to draw the reader in. While I don't think WWI is a normal topic for teen readers, the story is really just a fantasy with quite a bit a science fiction built in, exactly what Westerfeld is known for. The book is full of pen and ink drawings that bring scenes to life. A fantastic read & I cannot wait until the sequel comes out.

Need a Little Inspiration?

2010-02-06T20:33:00.003-06:00

Sometimes you want a movie that just makes you feel good. It isn't filled with belly laughs or thought provoking ideas but makes you just feel good and usually inspires you even if just a little bit. When I think of these types of films, the Hallmark Hall of Fame movies come to mind. The library has quite a few of these on DVD.

There was one on TV this Saturday which is what made me think of this. And the fact that I was going to call my mother but realized that she would be watching the movie. She loves the Hallmark Hall of Fame movies.

The movie that was on tonight was Front of the Class about a man who has Tourette's Syndrome and becomes a teacher. It was very inspirational.

Another one that I really enjoyed was The Water is Wide which is based on Pat Conroy's memoir of his first year teaching in a small school on an island off the South Carolina coast.

Many of these movies are based on books.

For more Hallmark Hall of Fame movies click here

Couples in Trouble

2010-02-03T17:12:00.005-06:00

In this case, when I talk about couples in trouble, I'm not refering to those who need couples' therapy. I am talking about couples in actual real dangerous trouble, that is, movie trouble. We are on the cusp of Feburary, the Valentine's Day month, and I have chosen to highlight those of my favorite movies that combine romance and danger. Luckily, there are plenty of juicy ones to choose from. I will give you three.

Number one: The Thirty-nine Steps (1935)- this is classic early Hitchcock starring Robert Donat and Madelaine Carroll. As the couple in trouble they are handcuffed together while on the run from all the bobbies in Britian because Robert Donat's character has been mistaken for a murderer. Madelaine Carroll at first believes he is a murderer too, but eventually she realizes that he is Robert Donat and therefore adorable. I will admit that I have had a thing for Mr. Donat ever since seeing this movie on late night TV when I was fifteen. Mr. Donat also played the schoolmaster in Goodbye Mr. Chips but it was in this Hitchcock movie that he won my heart. He never made as much of a splash in the U.S. as did Ronald Colman, which I have never understood since he is way cuter.

Number two: Heaven Knows Mr. Allison (1957) - directed by John Huston and starring Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr. I was uncertain whether or not to include this one because basically the relationship between the couple in trouble is unconsumated and a bit ambiguious despite the fact that the viewer comes to know that the characters that Mitchum and Kerr play do fall in love. The problem is that they are not supposed to as Deborah Kerr is Sister Angela, a nun and Robert Mitchum is a fairly profane marine corporal and they are marooned together on a South Pacific island during WWII. Because this movie was made in 1957, the love they fall into must never be acknowledged particularly by the nun, the marine corporal can be a little more honest about his feelings. But such is the skill of the two actors that no one is in doubt that they care for one another. However, that is not the trouble they are in. Aside from being marooned on a deserted island, their position becomes very precarious when Japanese troops land on it in force in order to lay a trap for allied shipping. Over all their situation is dicey indeed. This movie could have been maudlin, overly reverential and false, but it isn't due to a well written script, a tough minded director and a couple of very wonderful and tender performances by two of the best treasures of modern cinema, Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr.

Number three: Romancing the Stone (1984) - this stars Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. I was dragged kicking and screaming to the first showing of this mostly because I could not STAND Michael Douglas (still can't). But this picture managed to make that into a virtue. I'm not quite sure how. Anyhow this couple in trouble is chased all over the Columbian jungle by bad guys one of which is a horror called Colonel Zolo who is in pursuit of a map that Kathleen's character's sister sent her to the whereabouts of a huge jewel. What gives this movie its kick is that the character Kathleen Turner plays is a romance writer called Joan Wilder who finds herself embroiled in a situation that resembles nothing so much as one of her own plots right down to the swashbuckling semi-respectable hero, Jack T. Colton, played by Douglas. Once I surrendered to the premise I got carried right along and even rooted for the Douglas character, the first and only time that I have ever rooted for Michael Douglas I promise. The director, Robert Zemeckis, kept everything percolating nicely. Oh, and I want to mention one of the very best and funniest performances, Danny Devito as a kidnapper and would be thief. This movie had a sequel called Jewel of the Nile which I never saw because I was totally afraid that it wouldn't measure up to this one.

What's for Dinner?!

2010-01-30T17:16:00.005-06:00

I am sitting here watching Jacques Pepin and Julia Childs cook up a duck dish and trying to think of what I will cook for dinner tonight. My choices are slim: hot dogs, fish sticks, or frozen pizza. I obviously embrace disappointment with welcoming arms.

Recently a new book came in that looked interesting to me. It was titled: Family Feasts on $75 a Week. Usually these books are filled with hamburger casseroles that sound about as appetizing as my fish sticks do after watching Julie and Jacques. But just flipping through this book, several recipes caught my attention. She has a whole chapter on stir-fries with recipes like Korean Barbecued Beef and Orange Chicken, Panda-Style. The book has the ubiquitous casserole chapter but the recipes range from Chicken-Broccoli Enchiladas to Herbed Seafood Casserole.

But this isn't JUST a cookbook. Mary Ostyn,the author, also gives a healthy amount of information on how to save on your food bill. She guides you through the aisles of the grocery store giving tips for every section. I can't wait to put her tips to work for my family. Maybe we can save enough to take a vacation this year!

How Far Would a Guardian Angel Go?

2010-01-25T16:07:00.002-06:00

Zachary has been Miranda's guardian angel since she was born. He'd do just about anything to keep her safe. When Miranda's friend, Lucy, decides to meet a boy in the cemetery and drag Miranda along, Zachary has a bad feeling that the night is not going to end very well. His misgivings are well justified. By the end of the evening, Miranda is presumed dead, and Zachary has lost his wings and his guardian angel powers.

A year later, Zachary is given a chance to redeem himself. He is sent on a mission to destroy a particularly vicious vampire. Upon arrival, he discovers that Miranda is alive, sort of, as the vampire daughter of the most important vampire in the world. The man Zachary has been sent to get rid of. Can Zachary fulfill his mission or will his feelings for Miranda jeopardize any chance he has at regaining his wings?

Eternal by Cynthia Leitich Smith is an interesting take on the whole vampire/werewolf craze. It also has roots in Texas. Before her transformation, Miranda is from Dallas and looking forward to going to college at the University of North Texas. Zachary spends a good deal of his time between Miranda's disappearence and his new assignment hanging out in Austin. If you're into the vampire fiction than you will enjoy this story.

I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord...

2010-01-24T00:45:00.008-06:00

I tend to assume that I don't like science fiction. I don't know why I do that. When I think about books or movies that I've read/watched that I have really enjoyed a few science fiction titles tend to make the cut. I remember seeing old episodes of Doctor Who when I was in high school. They always seemed too campy and weird to be interesting to me. Then a couple years ago I happened to catch one of the new Doctor Who episodes on TV and was hooked. So I guess maybe I have an inner geek (of course, that implies I am not an outer geek!)

It helps the latest doctors are easier on the eyes (at least my eyes) than say Tom Baker or Tom Pertwee. I am also sure that advances in special effects have helped. What is equally nice is that the library has the ninth and tenth doctor on DVD so I can catch up on episodes that I miss when I just can't force myself to stay up until 1am on a Saturday night.

The Fort Worth Library also has some books to help me keep track of all the various aliens The Doctor encounters.

Doctor Who: The Visual Dictionary by Jacqueline Rayner

This title focuses on the newest incarnation of the Doctor

Creatures and Demons by Justin Richards

The DVDs

Complete First Series (Christopher Eccleston is The Doctor)

Complete Second Series (David Tennant is The Doctor)

and if you decide to give the earlier versions of The Doctor a try:

These feature William Hartnell (The First Doctor) on VHS

These feature Patrick Troughton (The Second Doctor) on VHS

These feature Tom Pertwee (The Third Doctor) on VHS

These feature Tom Baker (The Fourth Doctor) on DVD

These feature Tom Baker (The Fourth Doctor) on VHS

These feature Peter Davison (The Fifth Doctor) on VHS

This one features Sylvester McCoy (The Seventh Doctor) on VHS

so as the Doctor says: Think you've seen it all? Think again. Outside those doors, we might see anything. We could find new worlds, terrifying monsters, impossible things. And if you come with me...nothing will ever be the same again!

A Life Turned Upside Down

2010-01-18T11:07:00.004-06:00

Audrey is your average teenager. She goes to school everyday, has a fabulous best friend and a not so fabulous boyfriend. Her boyfriend, Evan, is a musician and while Audrey thought she really liked him in the beginning of her relationship, now she's not so sure. She's been conflicted about the relationship for a while. So conflicted that she had to make a pro's and con's list to determine if she should stay or go. Pro's-excellent oral hygiene, a talented singer/songwriter in a pretty decent band. Con's-he's always gigging or practicing, he actually says gigging (if you don't know music speak-a gig is a performance or show). The pro's list is pretty short but the con's list could go on for two pages. So Audrey decides to break up with Evan. He seems pretty sad about it and begs her to stay friends & come to his gig that night. She agrees, thankful that it went as easily as it did.

But when she gets to the gig, her whole world starts to crumble around her. Why? Well, it seems that Evan has concentrated all his feelings about the breakup into a new song. It is not nice nor is it flattering. Audrey is shocked! The really bad thing-the song is kinda catchy and the whole crown goes wild for it.

The next thing Audrey knows, THE SONG (entitled-Audrey, Wait!) is playing on the radio in continuous rotation, not just on the local station but all over the country. Suddenly, her yearbook photo gets leaked to the Internet, reporters are calling her house non-stop, paparazzi is hiding in her bushes, and Evan's fans are stalking her. Audrey just wants it all to stop and go back to her normal life, but can she?

A friend recommended Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway to me because they knew that in another life I wanted to be a musician and as such, I have been around my fair share of musicians. I thought that this novel was hysterical. Audrey is putting in an untenable situation and while others think she should be enjoying her 15 minutes of fame, she just wants out. She is also a huge fan of music and every chapter is infused with songs, bands and that love of music. I also think it is great that each chapter begins with a quote from a song by musicians as varied as Cowboy Junkies, R.E.M, and The White Stripes. I recently found a YouTube video of a band, The XYZ Affair, who has taken Robin Benway's lyrics to Audrey, Wait! and turned it into a real song.

Lizard Love

2010-01-15T14:14:00.002-06:00

The city shook, its buildings fell to smithereens under the thunderous clumsy lumbering of a fat guy in a lizard suit. At least, that is what it looked like to me when I first saw Godzilla as a little girl way, way, way back when. Strangely, it came to mind again when I saw the devastation that a real life monster created just this past week in Haiti.

It is weird the way the mind works. I do not mean to make light of the horror that Haitians are enduring but simply to acknowledge that the movies about the great lizard tug at a very serious thread in the collective consciousness. It is said that the Japanese created their mutant monster with the atomic breath as a reaction to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Given that, it is a bit hard to understand the love that the big lummox seems to engender in kids and adults alike even to this day.

Not long after I first started as a media librarian, I began to notice that often little boys particularly would come in looking for a Godzilla movie, any Godzilla movie. We only had one on DVD and one on VHS and the kids always seemed so disappointed. "We've seen those ones," they'd say in dolorous little voices. It was hard to take so I was inspired to ask the co-worker who was submitting orders for our discretionary fund to order as many Godzilla movies on DVD as were out there. She did the necessary research and came back to me looking dubious.

"There are plenty of Godzilla movies on DVD available, but most are in Japanese with English subtitles," she said. And she waited for my reaction. I took a minute or two to think. You see, I was teetering on the the pointy horn of a very pointy dilemma. Our Collection Management Department does most of the materials ordering for the Library but also assigns discretionary funds to us public service librarians to order materials for our collection at our, well, discretion.

But we are supposed to be very careful not to order anything that will just sit on the shelf and gather dust. That is frowned upon. And it is a pretty good rule of thumb that foreign language movies with English subtitles have at least one strike against them particularly if they are not the prestigious art house kind of "foreign movie" a category that the modestly produced Godzilla films never aspired to. However, recalling the forlorn faces of Godzilla hungry little boys, I gulped once and said, "Do it."

And, yes, this story does have a happy ending. All of the Godzilla movies, dubbed and subtitled alike, check out and check out and check out. And not just to little boys although they form the core of Godzilla devotees. One day a woman about my age came in, her hands trembling, her eyes alight and she said, "I understand that you have Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla." "Yes, we do," I replied." "Bring it to me!" she rasped. I did and then I said, "We have more." Her eyes grew wide, "Show me!" I did. And, as she bore them all away to the check-out counter, she breathed, "I love Godzilla." I believed her.

These are some serious times

2010-01-13T15:51:00.006-06:00

Disasters are a part of life it seems. It is one thing for me to be glued to the television watching all the minutiae about a disaster. I am drawn to them like a moth to the light. But it is something completely different for me to see my son in anguish while he watches the non-stop news and try to assuage his fears hours even weeks later. After Hurricane Katrina, any rain storm worried him. My parents live south of Houston so for years after Katrina (and then Ike) my son would intently watch the weather reports when a hurricane was mentioned. I can only imagine what the upcoming weeks will hold in store for me as he shows concern about earthquakes.

I lived in southern California until I was ten. I remember being in earthquakes; I remember earthquake drills at school. I was never in a "big one." My grandparents lived just 30 miles from the epicenter of the 1971 Sylmar earthquake. My parents remember my crib shaking violently in that earthquake even though we lived almost 70 miles to the south of the epicenter. Buildings by my grandparents had collapsed. I remember watching the Rose Bowl (USC vs Michigan) and then seeing our Christmas tree start to shake and the ornaments clink against each other when I was 8. I don't remember any great worry over "the big one" although I remember running for a doorway during that one. Earthquakes were just a part of life. I have lived through earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards--thankfully none of them were of historic proportions.

The first hurricane season my family lived in the Galveston area we were welcomed by Alicia. I remember standing outside and watching the trees nearly bend to the ground as the storm came in. I had always enjoyed hurricanes and then Katrina came. I will never look at a hurricane season quite the same way. My father would never evacuate before Katrina. But that year my parents left early when Rita was predicted to hit Galveston. They did the same thing when Ike made a bee line for Galveston. Both times their home was spared any serious damage. I listened to reports from New Orleans as Katrina come in and the full magnitude of her destruction started to become apparent.

I probably should have gotten a job with FEMA. In fact I used to fantasize about working for a disaster relief agency and getting calls in the middle of the night to pack up and head out to some distant place that had just been through Hell. But I became a librarian instead...

So today my mind is on Haiti--a country where some of the residents are among the most vulnerable in the world. What will become of this country now? Port-au-Prince has been devastated. We are only just now starting to get reports of the true extent of the damage.

Tonight while I watch the news with my son what impact will the events in Haiti have on him? He is a sensitive kid and I am sure he will cry. My thoughts will be with him who doesn't really know suffering and with the children of Haiti who know suffering all too well.

Here are some links to information on how to handle talking to your kids about disasters:

Tips for Talking to Children After a Disaster: a Guide for Parents and Teachers

Talking with Children When the Talking Gets Tough

Talking to Kids About World Natural Disasters

Best of the Brit Crime Series

2010-01-09T14:24:00.009-06:00

My sister says it all the time. "Those British really know how to cast actors. They have the absolute best actors for the roles in just about anything."

And another thing she admires is how British TV crime series are populated by ordinary looking people. "All those actors on American crime shows like CSI look like they were recruited into the police directly from a modeling agency," she says. "Except of course the gruff tough talking leader who is almost always male. He is allowed to have minor appearance flaws, like say a wrinkle or two around the eyes or, you know, some flab at the middle. If the leader is female she cannot have any appearance flaws at all but her emotional life must be a mess because of her job and she has some endearing little tick like bulimia because God forbid she should be fat and happy."

It is hard to believe how sagacious my sister has become since she was two years old and only interested in stuffing beans up her nose. She is absolutely, 100% right about British crime series. They comprise some of the best most entertaining TV out there. We have quite a few of them here at the Fort Worth Library. Here are three of my very favorites.

Pie in the Sky - This is an utter delight starring Richard Griffiths, the Dursley you love to hate in the Harry Potter movies. In this, he is so gentle, intelligent and good hearted he is almost unrecognizable as the same actor because the only thing the two characters have in common is sizable girth. He plays Henry Crabb an erstwhile police detective who upon retirement plans to open his own restaurant and spend the rest of his days doing what he loves best, cooking. Unfortunately, his conniving boss has other ideas and while he, with the help of his wife, does get to open a restaurant he must still be on call to help the police with difficult cases. The mix of cookery and crime is perfect. And they didn't cast a glamour puss as his wife. The actress actually looks to be around the same age as he and though she is a deal slimmer, she's no sylph. What she is, is classy, mature and attractive. Oh, be still my heart! This, when the Hollywood idea of a crime fighting couple seems to be something along the lines of a teenager and her dad. No middle aged females need apply.

New Tricks - A team of three over the hill retired policemen are pulled together to investigate crimes committed back in the seventies and eighties when they were in their respective hay days. The idea being that because they are familiar with how things were run back then they can assess if the cases were handled properly. It is an interesting premise and it does work. Their boss is female and she is no sylph nor spring chicken neither but is sexy anyway. Funny how British women seem to be able to manage that. Such women may exist in the U.S. but they rarely make it on the TV. The three retired cops are played by three of those wonderful old actors that Britain seems to be just full of. My favorite is the old roue playboy with three ex-wives and three daughters who he refers to affectionately in aggregate as "the coven."

Jonathan Creek - Nick and Nora? No. Macmillan and Wife? Unh-uh. Jonathan and Maddy? Yep. One of the sexiest couples in the crime fighting business. He is a pudgy curly headed nerd who figures out the illusions for a lime-light hogging stage magician and she is an even pudgier writer of true crime articles and books. They strike sparks off each other and yet never really consummate the relationship. That is, of course, the sexiest of relationships possible. And the murders are to die for. They are complicated "impossible" crimes but Jonathan with his expertise in how what looks impossible can actually be possible and Maddy with her dogged determination to get a story always seem to find the answers.

I have more favorites and I'll talk about more of them later. But for now, check these out...of the Fort Worth Library, of course.

Ojo Morado

2009-12-26T15:24:00.003-06:00

Another black eye for our state…as if the Branch Davidians and the George W. Bush Presidential Library weren’t enough, Texas is now home to the largest city in the United States without a bookstore.

With a population of 230,000, Laredo will lose its only bookstore, a B. Dalton located at the Mall del Norte, by the end of January, 2010. I didn’t know B. Daltons even still existed. I really need to get out more…

But I digress…

It’s not only Laredo who loses its only store, but also the neighboring city of Nuevo Laredo, with its 350,000 citizens, to whom the store apparently sold many a Spanish language title.

Does this matter to you? It bothers me, even though I rarely purchase books any more. Why would I, with the Fort Worth Library collection available at the touch of a mouse, along with our nationwide interlibrary loan system for those things we missed? But, in the words of Laredo’s public information officer, Xochitl Mora: “There’s something comforting about having a bookstore.” I agree. It’s sort of like me and churches. I never, ever go, but I like the fact that they’re there. It’s sort of like saying “relax a little…civilization nearby…” And God knows, with 30% of its residents living below the poverty line, Laredo needs all the civilization it can get.

Maybe there’s hope. A city-wide organization called Laredo Reads has created an on-line petition that anyone may sign to show the commercial powers-that-be that this recently bestowed honor belongs elsewhere, like in Oklahoma or Mississippi. Below is a link to their site:

http://www.laredoreads.com/

Don’t know what signing this does, other than to make one feel a tiny bit more noble than they did the minute before. But, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that.

What is the truth anyway?

2009-12-21T14:18:00.001-06:00

Micah is a self-professed compulsive liar. She lies about everything. It's hereditary. She comes from a whole line of liars, starting with her father. When she first started at her new school, she convinced everyone that she was a boy, until she got found out. Her life has been a string of lies. But now, she's ready to tell the truth, or is she?

One of the most popular boys in school, Zach, has been missing for several days and then turns up dead. Micah swears she had nothing to do with it, but it's hard to believe when the students find out that Micah and Zach had been seeing each other outside of school. The person who finds it the hardest is Zach's girlfriend, Sarah. The eyes of suspicion immediately fall to Micah. After all, she is the biggest liar out there and there are so many reasons why she could have done it.

Then it turns out that Zach was killed by a pack of wild dogs. Well, that certainly lets Micah off the hook, or does it?

Justine Larbalestier's book, Liar, takes an internal look at fact and fiction. It asks the question, when is a lie, a lie, an omission, a way to explain yourself, or something else entirely. Her narrator, Micah, is the most unreliable person in the book. The reader is constantly asking themselves, is this the truth or is it a lie. Full of twists and turns, the book reads at a super fast pace. At the end, I'm still not sure what was true, what wasn't, and whether or not the whole thing wasn't just made up by Micah.

replay from last december

2009-12-18T23:48:00.001-06:00

This is a post I did last year about this time. I like it so much I felt it deserved a rerun.

I am from the pre-digital age. We had mix tapes--not playlists. In fact, I used to make tons of mix tapes for myself and my boyfriend. At the end there would always be that little bit of extra tape—not enough for another song but too much to just leave, so I would create a sort of montage from snippets of songs. I was recently playing around on Last.fm and ran across a reference to the Dropkick Murphys which led me to Black 47 which in turn reminded me of one of my all time favorite holiday tunes—Fairy Tale of New York by the Pogues. That got me thinking about holiday songs I like to hear. This week my department had our winter celebration party complete with holiday music playlist. My coworker focused on the traditional songs of the season. But it got me to thinking of what MY ultimate holiday mix tape would be like. So here it is! If the song is available from the library, there is a hot link.

Fairy Tale of New York—The Pogues
Happy Xmas (War is Over)—John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)—U2
Christmas Wrapping—The Waitresses (but I prefer the Save Ferris cover)
2000 Miles—The Pretenders
The Chanukah Song—Adam Sandler
The Christmas Song—The Raveonettes (This is NOT about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.)
Feed the World (Do They Know It’s Christmas)—Band-Aid
Feast of Lights—They Might Be Giants
Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk—The Decemberists (cover of a John Denver ditty)
All That I Want—The Weepies
Christmas—The Who (I prefer the Smithereen's cover version)
Last Christmas—Manic Street Preachers (Wham! can only dream that their original is as awesome as this cover)
Merry Christmas From the Family—Robert Earl Keen (Talk about dysfunctional!)
Christmas at the Zoo—The Flaming Lips
Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)—The Ramones
That Was the Worst Christmas Ever—Sufjan Stevens
Your Christmas Whiskey—Minus 5
Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas—The Eels (although the fact it was on the OC almost kills it for me)
Give the Jew Girl Toys—Sarah Silverman
Hanukkah Oh Hanukkah—Brave Combo
Linus and Lucy--Vince Guaraldi Trio
Jolly Boots of Doom--Shomstoppers (probably only available on the web)
All I Want for Christmas—My Chemical Romance
Xmas Curtain—My Morning Jacket
A Christmas Dirge—Nellie McKay
25th December—Everything But the Girl
Father Christmas—The Kinks (Ok-Go does a really good cover too)
Don’t Shoot Me Santa—The Killers
My December—Linkin Park
Christmas with the Devil—Judith Owen (Yes this is a jazz cover of the Spinal Tap song.)
The Little Drum Machine Boy—Beck
I Won’t Be Home For Christmas—Blink-182
When I Get Home for Christmas—Snow Patrol
Just Like Christmas—Low
I am Santa Claus--Bob Rivers

Bad Storytelling 101

2009-12-12T09:34:00.008-06:00

OK, kids, I will kick off this lecture/rant by declaring unequivocally that there are 3 main types of bad professional storytelling that I have observed in my long career of reading, listening to and watching stories. I will not talk about the inability to use basic grammar because this post deals with authors who have been published, or in the case of those writing for the media, produced, and I am willing to concede this basic competence to them and/or their editors.

I will give examples of the three types of bad storytelling but I won't give the specific offending title or author except in the last case, because there are people out there who are fans of even the lamest excuse for an author or book or program and, since I feel that those poor sods have low self esteem anyway, I don't want to strike another blow against their fragile psyches. I am a merciful person.

OK, now, first type of bad storytelling.

1. The storyteller cannot construct a good plot - A strong well built plot is necessary to a good story, because, folks, the plot is the story. It can meander all over the place as long as the storyteller can keep the reader or listener or watcher engaged but it really shouldn't have huge holes in it. An example of this is an episode of a detective series I watched recently. In it some poor guy finds out that unbeknownest to him and her, he has been sleeping with his mom (stealing from the classics is always allowed), and she killed herself when she found out and he went on a killing rampage against those people who had been responsible for their predicament. The problem is that the secret of her lover's birth was revealed to the mom by someone who had no way of knowing about it. Really. This sort of thing is beyond sloppy.

2. The storyteller has no originality of expression - Since there are really no new plots, to keep an audience of readers or listeners or watchers engaged means that the storyteller should develop a unique "voice" or style. And let me be clear, piling every available cliched phrase or descriptive element on top of another does not amount to a unique style. I am currently listening to an audio book on CD and I have just about had it with "eyes twinkling merrily," "tails wagging furiously,"heads nodding solemnly,"lips smiling slyly" on and on, every cliche making me wince as if I'd bitten down on a bad tooth. The plot is fairly interesting and I would like to know what happens, but I don't know how much more tripe I can take.

3. The storyteller hates you - Yes, that's right. The storyteller has come to despise the audience and the very notion of telling an understandable story. I said that I would give the name of my example of this kind of bad storytelling. And I will because I don't need to be afraid of hurting any one's self esteem. Those who read James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake and claim to admire it are impregnable to self doubt and will continue to admire themselves greatly and write huge dissertations on it to be read and admired by those who are equally proud of themselves for admiring those who admire themselves for having read this almost un-readable later work of James Joyce. This circle of admiration will never include me and probably not you either.

The irony is that one of the most superb examples of sublime storytelling is also by James Joyce and that is his short story The Dead from his early collection, The Dubliners. It ends with one of the loveliest and most profound paragraphs ever penned in the English language. I also recommend the movie made from this story and directed by John Houston, whose last film it was. It will put you in that state of nirvana that comes from exposure to the achingly beautiful and true.

End of lecture/rant.

You Got the Music in You

2009-12-10T19:36:00.002-06:00

On Thursday the library was filled with the sounds of music. It was really nice. It definitely put a little smile on my face. Music has a way of doing that. I always wish I had learned to play an instrument. I took violin for two years in elementary school and that is the extent of my formal music education. I had wanted to learn to play the drums but my parents put a stop to that idea immediately! The screechy violin was enough for their nerves. The drums probably would have pushed them over the edge. I took violin because my sister had taken violin. She took violin because her hands were too small to play both the flute and clarinet.

I love music. The library is a great place to get all kinds of music. I can expose my son to rock classics he hears on commercials to Klezmer his bubbe probably listened to as a little girl to the bluegrass his grandfather listened to as a kid.

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah and I am hoping my son chooses to open his Guitar Hero band kit. I really want to unleash my inner rock star.

Eye vs Ear

2009-12-08T13:36:00.002-06:00

Writer Neil Gaiman was on NPR’s Morning Edition the other day extolling the virtues of the recorded book. For some reason, I have never been a listener of this format. I have always had a CD player in my car and at home, but I prefer using them for music CDs. I guess I was always afraid that getting involved in something more complicated like a novel would distract me from driving. And Fort Worth traffic certainly doesn’t need me to be any more distracted than I already am.

He did pose an interesting question at the end of his report: Does listening to a recorded book equal reading the same book in print? For those of you who do listen, if someone asks if you’ve read something and you’ve only listened to it, do you answer yes or no?

Some say no. Critic Harold Bloom, for one, was quoted in the story: “Deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear. You need the whole cognitive process, that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you.” I’m not sure I really understand all of that, but I guess that’s why he teaches at Yale and I don’t.

Mr. Gaiman disagrees. He thinks one can have a “close and perfectly valid relationship with the text when you hear it.”

Audio producer Rick Harris takes the middle ground. When asked if an audiobook is a book, he says no. “An audiobook is a separate entity that is absolutely true. A novel can be seen as many things and one of the things it can be seen as is a script for an audio performance.”

How about the rest of you who do listen and read? Equal or not? What’s the difference between listening and reading in how you understand the text?

Fear of Reading

2009-12-05T14:00:00.000-06:00

I am currently reading the new A.S. Byatt, The Children's Book. I read her best seller, Possession and like everyone else was captivated by it. After that I tried one or two of her other novels but found them disappointing, too wrapped up in the 20th century academic world for my taste. So I was intrigued by the marketing that declared "If you liked Possession, you will love The Children's Book."

I didn't just take the hype on the book as gospel. As is my wont, I went to Amazon.com and read the readers' reviews of it first. I do that before spending my money on a book. I find that professional reviewers with their pretensions of being literary connoisseurs can lose sight of what constitutes a good read for us mere mortals. Anyway the readers' reviews forewarned me that The Children's Book really wasn't all that similar to Possession, however, their descriptions of the novel did convince me that I would probably like it.

I got it. I read it. It was very good and I recommend it unreservedly.

But, that, per se, is not what this post is about. It is about an interesting theme that emerged from all those reader reviews of The Children's Book. In many of them, the reader reviewer would praise the novel and then after listing all the things he or she liked would start to whinge and whine. It was too long, over 600 some odd pages. It had "huge" passages of description. The detail was "excessive." There were too many characters and they were hard to keep track of. There was too much historical background given with one reviewer decrying the frequent "lectures" given by Byatt. In short, there was just too much there to read besides the "story."

Well, personally, I like a lot of historical background. I admit that I read historical novels partly to learn history and pick up intriguing facts. So I was prepared to slog through it as I had slogged through War and Peace. Imagine my surprise when most of those "huge" passages turned out to be a couple of pages or less. The longest was about seven pages but in them she was bringing her characters from the Victorian into the Edwardian age. I breezed through this enjoying the author's obvious interest in her material and realizing that by giving context to the characters, my understanding of them and the story was greatly enhanced.

It became obvious to me that if the Amazon.com complainants thought Byatt's digressions were extreme they had never tackled Tolstoy. That man could gas on forever about Napoleon and the Battle of Borodino and his (Tolstoy's) opinions of Russian culture and philosophy before he allowed the narrative to struggle forward even a little bit. And if you really want to be confused by the characters just try to keep track of Tolstoy's because every one of that vast Russian crew has at least three different names. Then I wondered how they would react to Melville's Moby Dick with that honking great treatise on whaling plunked down in the middle of it. And as for "excessive" detail you can't beat Charles Dickens or any of the Victorian writers.

I began to recognize in their responses to Byatt's "lectures" something I have come to call "fear of reading." As a librarian I have encountered this syndrome frequently. I have seen the pupils of patrons' eyes shrink to pinpricks of panic when realizing that book they were assigned to read is over 200 pages long. Now you say that such patrons aren't really "readers." And I acknowledge the truth of that. But now I have discovered that a form of this disorder has spread to self-identified avid readers such as those who post their reviews on Amazon.com.

There is a type of "reader" now who has no patience with any element in a novel that is not strictly narrative. I really don't know how to feel about that, but on some level I think I am a bit alarmed. I enjoy the works of Robert Parker but I don't think I would be satisfied with his brand of stripped down, dialog and action only driven writing as an exclusive diet. Can I hope that there will always be readers who enjoy an author's digressions and their attempts to create atmosphere by descriptive passages or to help us see a character? Or am I just swimming agains the tide? What do you guys think?

Oy...here it is almost the 25 of Kislev

2009-12-04T08:00:00.002-06:00

and I have only just started to think about Hanukkah!

This is always a hard time of year for me. I wasn't born Jewish but in my mid 20s found that my personal theology fit most closely with Judaism. As I raise my son he enjoys Hanukkah with me and Christmas with my parents and sister. He loves the story of the Maccabees and often likes to fashion himself as the powerful Judah striking down the attacking Greeks.

Because the Jewish calendar is lunar based Hanukkah moves around a bit. It is always the 25th of Kislev but can be as early as Thanksgiving or as late as New Year's Eve. This year the first night is December 11. Then for eight nights we will light one more candle on our menorah and celebrate the miracle that happened so long ago. Hanukkah is not the Jewish Christmas. In fact Hanukkah is a minor holiday that is not even mentioned in the Tanakh (the Jewish bible). It is a celebration of a military victory, a spiritual victory, and a miracle. Only in countries where it has to compete with Christmas has it taken on the gift giving extraganza that it is here in the US. Hanukkah is really more about staying true to your beliefs even in the face of death, fighting for what you know is right, and having the faith that it will all work out in the end if you do your part.

In order to help my son embrace this holiday, I want to have stories to read to my son:

In the Month of Kislev by Nina Jaffe

This is the Dreidel by Abby Levine

Hanukkah! by Roni Schotter (I really like her Jewish holiday titles)

Hooray for Hanukkah! by Fran Manushkin

Just Enough is Plenty by Barbara Diamond Goldin

Chanukah Lights Everywhere by Michael Rosen

Hanukkah Haiku by Harriet Ziefert

And some books that will explain the holiday to him a little better:

Hanukkah Around the World by Tami Lehman-Wilzig

Celebrating Hanukkah by Deborah Heiligman

All About Hanukkah by Judyth Saypol Groner

Some things for watching or listening:

Lights and Laughter Joel ben Izzy spins Hanukkah Tales

Kayla's Chanukah Concert (DVD)

Maccabees: The Story of Hanukkah (DVD)

Chanuka and Passover at Bubbe's (DVD)

Hanukkah Tales and Tunes: Miracles and Wonders (DVD)

And a few titles for myself

Celebrating the Jewish Year Volume 2

Jacques Pepin's Chanukah Celebration (DVD)

A Different Light: The Big Book of Hanukkah

The Essential Book of Jewish Festival Cooking

Jewish Holidays Cooking: Festive Meals for Celebrating the Year

Plus I love having music playing in the background energizing all the festivities

Woody Guthrie's Happy Joyous Hanukkah by the Klezmatics

A Taste of Paradise by the Klezmer Conservatory Band

Judische Lebenswelten Patterns of Jewish Life by various

and maybe after all of this you decide you want to attend a celebration....

The Galleria in Dallas Dec 13 at 5pm

Chabad of Dallas' Rabbi Dubrawsky will lead the event. Entertainment and refreshments will follow. (The announcement says the first lighting but according to my calendar Dec 11 is the first night and so long as you light the Hanukkah candle before the Shabbos candle I think you are okay.)

The Shops at Willow Bend in Plano Dec 14th at 6:15pm

Chabad of Plano will provide music, gift bags, and (yummy) gelt for the kids! A talent show will follow the lighting ceremony.

If anyone knows of something a little closer to our neck of the woods...let me know!

Who is hiding a terrible secret?

2009-11-30T13:04:00.001-06:00

Jocasta, Martha & Clio meet in 1985 on their way to travel the world during their gap year. Together, they explore Thailand before going their separate ways. They all promise to meet up at the end of the year to discuss their travels, but it never happens. Years later, they are involved in their own lives and have never really even thought about what happened to the other two.

But one of these three women has a secret. She got pregnant during that year and never told anyone. The woman abandoned the baby at London's Heathrow Airport. The baby's name is Kate. She is now a teen and wants to know who her birth mother is and why she would abandon her child.

Fate suddenly throws the three women together and the mystery starts. Which one of these women-Jocasta-a semi-single, beautiful reporter, Clio-the doctor with a rocky marriage, or Martha-the single successful lawyer about to start a run for a political career-is Kate's mother and can she keep her secret safe or will her whole life blow up in her face?

Sheer Abandon by Penny Vincenzi is full of twists and turns. Figuring out the mystery keeps readers enthralled and coming back for more. Vincenzi's supporting characters are as interesting as the three women. I had a hard time putting the book down even though I wasn't completely happy with the ending. All in all, a great read!

Funny, Isn't It Romantic?

2009-11-28T14:00:00.003-06:00

A co-worker of mine lately expressed a penchant for romantic comedy movies and that sparked a desire to write about my all time favorite romantic comedy movie couples. So here goes.

I did kind of a mental review and I realized that I don't have any favorites from the silent movie era which brings up the question, were there any romantic comedy silent films? I can't think of any. I mean Charlie Chaplin romanced a girl or two in them but his movies were always just comedies. And lovers sometimes made goo goo eyes at one another in mildly amusing scenes sprinkled through Mary Pickford melodramas but maybe there had to be the sound of lovers billing and cooing and quarreling before Hollywood could make romance funny enough to sustain an actual movie genre.

However moving on a decade or two, we come to my first (chronologically) favorite screen couple, Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald. Oh my YES! The cocky Frenchman and the imperious diva square off in two of my favorite movies, The Love Parade (1929) directed by that master of frothy delights, Ernst Lubitsch, and Love Me Tonight (1932) directed by Rouben Mamoulian with songs by Rodgers and Hart. Oh, did I mention that both films are also musicals? Don't let that put you off. Neither one of these performers were ever sexier than when they were striking sparks off one another onscreen.

The odd thing is that they hated one another off screen. But, whatever the reason, that hostility translated into something pretty hot in front of the cameras. Separately, both performers could be over the top and kind of ridiculous but together they generated a delicious silliness that is so much fun to watch and listen to that by the end of the movie you are completely satisfied and happy, which is how a romantic comedy should leave you.

Then there is The Lady Eve (1941) directed by Preston Sturges the screwball comedy king. It stars Barbara Stanwyck as the bad girl con artist and Henry Fonda as the earnest sweet rich guy she falls for while trying to make him fall for her. It is like watching a snake and a mouse hypnotize each other. It is completely fascinating and funny. Stanwyck and Fonda worked together in two other films that were mostly forgettable but this one lands them in my all time favorite romantic comedy couple category regardless.

I'm going to skip over a lot of years now and I won't be mentioning such couples as Tracy and Hepburn or Rock Hudson and Doris Day because as good as some of the movies that they graced were, they just aren't among my favorites. Can't explain why, just aren't. All right, I'll back down on that a bit. I really did enjoy Tracy and Hepburn in Pat and Mike (1952) wherein Tracy as a big palooka sports trainer helps all round athlete Hepburn perform up to her full potential while of course falling in love with her. However, in their other endeavors together Hepburn was "put in her place" by Tracy just a little too enthusiastically for my taste.

Now closer to the present day my next favorite couple is comprised of Drew Barrymore and just about anybody. There is something about Drew's giddy sweetness that acts as an anodyne in which the petulance of such child men as Adam Sandler, The Wedding Singer (1998), Fifty First Dates, (2004) and Hugh Grant, Music and Lyrics (2007), melts into true soul mate material.

Finally, my last entry in the romantic comedy couples sweepstakes is Ricky Gervais and Téa Leoni in Ghost Town. This did not do too well at the box office and that is a crying shame because it hosts gut busting laughter and the delight of watching two slightly off center human beings click into complete harmony. At the end of it, you are wearing a silly grin which is exactly what you should be wearing at the end of a romantic comedy.

Anyway, those are my picks. What are yours?

Playing favorites

2009-11-24T11:43:00.004-06:00

One of my least favorite questions as a librarian is “What’s your favorite book?” How can you ask a reader to narrow it down to just one? But now that I think about it, it is not that hard. There is one book that I have read several times over the last twenty years and frequently recommend to other people. At one time we had three copies of the book in my house – one for me, one for my husband and a third to lend to friends. The book I am referring to is Orson Scott Card’s science fiction book, ENDER’S GAME, originally published as a novel in 1985 although it started out as a short story in 1977.

This book seems to engender strong feelings – either you love it or your hate it. This is not the type of book I would have typically chosen to read because it is about children being trained to fight in an intergalactic war. War and violence are just not my thing. The truth is I read it because I wanted to impress my boyfriend (now husband). In the book humankind faces the very real threat of being annihilated by the Formics an insect-like alien race. The book centers around six-year-old Ender Wiggin as he attends battle school at a space station with other young military geniuses. Through a series of calculated psychological and physical war games the students are manipulated by their elders in order to produce the most effective soldiers in the universe. What fascinated me about this book is the psychological development of Ender and his ability to counter-manipulate his teachers and battle school opponents. He manages to rise above seemingly hopeless situations. Despite the violence I found myself to be deeply empathetic to Ender’s plight.

If you like this book you may also enjoy the companion book ENDER’S SHADOW. There are several other books in the series, but they have not captured my attention as much as these two.

The psychological aspects of this book reminds of another favorite science fiction book. It is William Sleator’s HOUSE OF STAIRS. I was fifteen-years-old when I read it for my mother. She was a school librarian in Houston and during the summers she was asked to review books for possible purchase. She wasn’t into science fiction so she asked me to read and review it for her. The book is about five sixteen-year-olds orphans who are put in a strange building with stairs that go every which way and lead to nowhere. The teens are provided with a toilet, water, a machine that produces food pellets and they are given no privacy whatsoever. The food machine starts out giving pellets upon demand, but it gradually begins to restrict the pellets until only certain behaviors are displayed – talk about Pavlovian responses. What is expected of the teens to get food is constantly changing and they are forced to become increasingly aggressive to one another to get food at all. Read the book to find out how far they are willing to go for food.

A Social Experiment

2009-11-23T13:03:00.001-06:00

When Jonell McLain saw the diamond necklace in the jewelry store window, she was instantly drawn to it, even though it was not something that she would normally be drawn to. Jonell was not a fan of consumerism, but for some reason, she could not get it out of her mind. At $37, 000, it was certainly not a purchase she could ever consider.

A few weeks later, she was back at the jewerly store and now the necklace was $22,000. But this was still out of her reach. On a third visit, she noticed a flyer advertising an jewerly auction in the store and everything, including her necklace, was up for auction. Suddenly, Jonell had an idea-What if she got several other women to put up $1,000 each for the necklace and they shared it. No one woman could ever afford such a luxury but several women together, what an experiment. This interesting idea would form a group of women, who in normal circumstances would probably never speak, that would set about to change not only their own lives but the lives of others in their community.

This non-fiction book, The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment that Transformed Their Lives by Cheryl Jarvis, follows these extraordinary women as the necklace weaves in and out of their lives. Each woman chose to participate in this group for very different reasons and the necklace changes them in unexpected ways. An inspirational story that discusses the true value of an item, the power of a group especially a group of women, community activism and spirit, and learning the value of compromise.

What now?

2009-11-20T14:51:00.002-06:00

D Magazine just started a book blog and it’s grabbed my attention…along with an online discussion of a book (most recently Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays), Reading Room canvases local business leaders and other well-known Dallasites on what they are currently reading. The entries are written in a casual, conversational manner and are actually quite informative about books that I have little or no knowledge of. And it is a thought-provoking look at the current state of books and reading amongst people to like to read. Like all of you.

So…we have an idea about what’s being read over in Dallas. How about Fort Worth? I have a few things on my coffee table: The River Flows North, by Graciela Limón, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd for my next book discussion group meeting and a novella by Colombian writer Laura Restrepo called The Scent of Invisible Roses. But being able to read only one book at a time, the one actually containing my Argentine 10 peso bill bookmark is a young adult novel called Muchacho, by LouAnne Johnson. Ms. Johnson was the author of My Posse Don’t Do Homework, from which the movie Dangerous Minds was made a few years back starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Muchacho tells the story of Eddie Corazon, a tough kid who attends an alternative school in a New Mexico barrio who is a “secret reader”: someone who actually likes to read but has to be careful about who knows this little foible. I like reading books about Latino teens, since they are the chief demographic in my library and anything I can to do to help me understand them is good for everyone involved. Believe me.

What about the rest of you? What are you reading right now, at this very minute (aside from this blog)?

Teen Fiction with a dollop of romance

2009-11-20T09:48:00.010-06:00

I was reading another book blog this morning and it reminded me about a book I had really enjoyed. The thought of that one title started me thinking about other teen books I had read as an adult that I really loved. Of course the site also mentioned My Sweet Audrina, a VC Andrews title that I don't think I will ever forget--some of the imagery is burned into my memory bank forever.

This is a list of books that I didn't want to end.

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

My memory is rather vague on the actual storyline. I remember deserts and sand. Robin McKinley has written numerous books for teens and tweens. Many of her titles are extensions of fairy tales or folk tales.

Shabanu by Suzanne Fisher Staples

Another desert locale title. For someone who hates the heat I seem drawn to books with lots of sand that isn't on a beach! Shabanu's story is continued in Haveli.

Flight of the Dragon Kyn by Susan Fletcher

Ah this title does not involve sand. There is an underlying romance with adventure. If I have to be honest all of the titles listed here have some element of a romance in them.

Unfortunately, FWL doesn't own a copy of these next three books but it is well work the effort to get them through InterLibrary Loan

The China Garden by Liz Berry
This is full of mystery. Plus it takes place in the English countryside. I'm a sucker for anything English.

The Road Home by Ellen Emerson White
This title was gritty. The main character is a combat nurse in Vietnam. The story begins during her tour of duty and continues once she is back state side living with her parents.

My Father's Scar by Michael Cart
I was totally drawn into the life of the main character. His pain became my pain.

Romance in some shape or form plays a role in all of these books. Maybe that is why I liked them so much. Now while I wouldn't be caught dead reading a Harlequin, I definitely like a little romance with my mysteries. Nothing like a little sexual tension to make a nasty murder even more intriguing.

Let's see:

Shabanu has an arranged marriage.

The China Garden a handsome young man who shares in the mystery of the China Garden on the manor.

The Road Home has romantic elements for the lead character both while she is in Vietnam and when she comes home.

My Father's Scar revolves around the main characters homosexual awakening and how it impacts his relationship with his family.

Flight of the Dragon Kyn has a little romance as well.

What would you do to survive?

2009-11-16T13:00:00.001-06:00

May 16th was supposed to a great day. Families all over the U.S. and the world were gathering to watch the meteor. The meteor should put on a wonderful show when it hit the moon. All the scientists were excited and talked about what a wonderful event it was and how no one should miss it. No one was expecting what happened and no one could have imagined the lengths that humankind was going to have to go to survive.

In Life as We Knew It, Miranda is a typical 16 year old living in Pennsylvania. She hangs out with her friends, is on the swim team and spends hours on the computer gossiping about her favorite celebrity. She's semi-excited about being a god mother to her dad's new baby. She watches the meteor with her mom and brother from their front lawn with the rest of the block. When the meteor impacts the moon, the moon starts to move. Suddenly, it is off kilter and way too close. Everyone on the block knows they are in big trouble.

Overnight, chaos has broken out around the country. The moon has changed tidal patterns and most of the east & west coast have flooded, then comes the earthquakes and volcano eruptions. Miranda's mom is proactive and understands that they need to start preparing for a total loss of services. After a day of frenzied shopping and cleaning out every store they can think of, Miranda feels like her mother has lost her mind. But, within a few weeks as food, gas, and electricity are becoming scarcer, Miranda realizes that her mother may have just saved their lives.

As the months creep by, Miranda's family circumstances become more and more tense and Miranda begins to wonder if they will survive.

In The Dead & the Gone, May 16th was a normal day for Alex Morales. A junior in high school, he goes to school and then heads off to the New York pizza parlor where he works. He has no interest in the meteor and doesn't even seem to know it was happening. Alex's mom is an operating room technician and was scheduled to work that night and his dad was out of the country visiting relatives. After the meteor hits, Alex's parents never come home and he is left to care for his two younger sisters. He doesn't know if they are alive or dead, but after months of no word, he must assume that they have died.

New York is devastated by the meteor strike. Since most of the city is surrounded by water, the tidal changes flood out more than half the city and death is every where. Alex and his sisters must fight every day to survive. He sends one of his sisters away to a local convent because she will be guaranteed food every day. He must steal clothes, food and just about anything he can trade in order to help his family. Even though he knows that he and his sisters must get out of New York if they are going to make it, it is extremely hard to convince both himself & his sisters that they must give up on their parents returning home. With the help of a former classmate's father, he arranges travel out of the city for the three of them, but at the last minute, the weather turns so bad that the way out is canceled. Alex wonders if all the time he spent trying to save his family was for nothing and if they are all going to die any way.

Susan Beth Pfeffer takes one event and in two separate books looks at how teens are effected differently by that event. Both books are enthralling. I was on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next. I certainly hope that she continues writing stories about this event. These are definitely fascinating reading.

Who needs a turkey for Thanksgiving---when you have a sleeping bag and a campfire

2009-11-13T21:56:00.010-06:00

I can't believe it is almost Thanksgiving. For the past few years, I would take my son to the Fort Worth Zoo on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (half price day.) But last year I started thinking that Thanksgiving would be a great time to start taking short trips.

I am thinking about taking a camping trip with my son. I've been wanting to drive the Talimena Scenic Drive. I was hoping the trees would be in full color. But according to the fall foliage schedule web site for Arkansas this coming weekend is really the last one for any color. Anyway. A camping trip would get me out of having to cook a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

If I get my nerve up and we do go camping here are some books that will help me:

Camping with the Corps of Engineers

Camping and Backpacking with Children

Camping with Kids: How to plan a trip the whole family will enjoy

Exploring Oklahoma with Children

Right now I am sitting at home and I am not sure if these titles will have the Talimena drive in them (but even if they don't I'm sure they will provide a lot of material for wishful thinking.)

America's National Scenic Trails

The Most Scenic Drives in America: 120 Spectacular Road Trips

Off The Beaten Path: A travel guide to more than 1,000 scenic and interesting places still uncrowded and inviting

And some web sites:

Talimena Scenic Drive: a National Scenic Byway includes maps, interactive pages, and a lot more

Queen Wilhelmina State Park This state park is at the Mena, AR end of the drive.

Talihina Main Street highlights Talihina, OK the western terminus of the drive